Usually, young men and boys are the target audiences of video games and they spend more hours playing them than women.
But this holiday season, it is women who are the main focus to boost sales!
Electronic Arts Inc. is releasing the newest installment "Littlest Pet Shop" for younger girls and "Charm Girls Club" for older girls. There are even workout games targeting women like "Your Shape" and "Just Dance" .
Ubisoft was one of the first to view women as a market potential when they release the game "Petz", a pet-stimulation series; it sold 19 million copies since being released four years ago.
Female players now account for about 40% of the overall market compared to 2001 when it was less than 12%. It's calculated that a 5% increase in female players could make $1 billion in new revenue every year.
There are women play games, but don't consider themselves to be gamers. One woman says she plays "Rock Band" or "Guitar Hero" when she's with a group of friends.
Another woman got a Wii as a gift two years ago and "slowly lost interest". She plays "FarmVille" on Facebook for about an hour a week.
My brother plays games everyday of every hour when I see him. If he's not in his room playing his Xbox 360 he's on the computer and then afterwords it's back to the Xbox 360.
I do enjoy playing games and find them a lot of fun like Resident Evil 4, Legend of Dragoon, Drakenguard, DDR (Dance Dance Revolution), Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9, 10 and more. It's just that I always seem to find something else to do that takes up my time.
It takes me forever to finish a game while it'll take my brother only a couple of hours or two days at the least; for me, it can take a year or more.
No matter how much I love the game that I'm into, I don't know what it is, I just can't seem to make myself stay put and play it when I know I really want to.
Maybe, it's the need to go out and do something than be stuck inside playing in a world that isn't real? I like the fantasy worlds very much, but I enjoy being out and about. Maybe that's it...?
Who knows if this will change even if video game companies create a game that targets a large female audience.
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I think that it is very cool video games are now targeting woman. I remember back in the day when all my cousins would be playing war games and scary video games and there was not much for young girls. But, now with the pet games and others coming out younger girls will get to enjoy video games. They are also hitting a older crowd when they introduced Wiifit and Wii yoga. I love those games.
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