The new data also reveals that 45% of Xbox owners and 41% of PS5 owners are female, too
This really shouldn’t be news and it certainly shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, but yes, new data from Circana shows that—as we told you in 2017—women play video games. In fact, more than half of all Switch owners are women. And a very vocal bunch of idiots are reacting about as well as you’d expect to this “revelation.”
I am glad this trend is becoming better understood. A more diverse audience means more diverse stories being told, and while another MCU or Street Fighter is a perfectly good game to release a game targeting that more diverse audience will give more options for me. I typically play games like Risk of Rain, Skyrim, Creeper World, and so on, but I have also lost many hours to Viva Piñata, so I would love to see some more diversity in the games on offer.
You do realize women like fighting games and the MCU, right?
That’s the whole point of this statistic: the current gaming market is already palatable to everybody, unlike what your statement seem to misunderstand.
Eh, just because lots of women are playing games doesn’t mean they’re catered to women.
Don’t get me wrong, the industry’s come a long way from every female character having 28DD’s and videogame trailers being all about stoic badasses and explosions. I think the rise of indie games has been great for that. But there’s an undeniable male-coded streak that still exists in marketing and in the industry, especially at the AAA level, and there’s progress we can still make there.
Bold of you to assume that a certain type of ‘gamer’ sees stories being more diverse as a positive 😩
I have always found it bizarre that some people find the option of a story they don’t like threatening. I mean, go to a library, there are whole sections about gardening, I have black thumbs, nothing could interest me less, but it being there doesn’t hurt me, and if I changed my mind there it is. Everyone wins in my opinion.