Hardcore gamers not buying hardcore games?
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
While i do love and love to read Bill Harris, i think his take-home message from a recent post concerning the sales numbers of ‘hardcore games’ is incorrect. First off:
The installed base of the DS in the U.S. is 30 million units. The installed base of the Wii in the U.S. just crossed 20 million units.
It would be laughable to allege that only the “non-hardcore” are buying these systems. Almost everyone I know who plays games has a DS, and a good percentage of those people are in the “hardcore” category. To a lesser extent, that’s true of the Wii as well.
Even if only 5% of the people who buy a DS or Wii fall into the “hardcore” category, that still translates to 1.5 million DS owners and 1 million Wii owners. And I think that percentage is an incredibly low estimate, particularly for the DS.
So the story inside the story, at least to me, is that hardcore gamers who own the DS and the Wii aren’t buying the hardcore games.
The population of North America is 303-odd million (you can google that). That means that 10 percent of the population own a DS and 7 per cent own a Wii. I don’t believe that the hardcore gamer share of that population makes up even that much.
Of course these numbers are all just a prelude to reaching an unconnected conclusion in reality: not all people like the same things. There were around 11 million 360s in the USA in November 2008 and yet by August 2008 there had only been 4.7 million copies of GTA 4 sold even though 360 owners are more likely to be hardcore gamers who like hardcore games. That’s a ratio of 42%.
If we take it for granted that both the Wii and DS are owned by a majority of people who lie in the groups labelled as ‘casual’ and ‘under the age of 15′ then the number of hardcore gamers who own a DS and are capable of buying GTA game will likely to be fewer than the total number of gamers who could/’wanted to’ have done so on the 360.
Ultimately, people don’t buy the Wii and DS to play the same sorts of experiences that they could get elsewhere and the people that would and do will not all like or enjoy the same games. To me, it’s not surprising that these games sold badly – perhaps as badly as they did, yes that surprised me. Chinatown Wars was a harkening back to GTA 2 – a concept that hasn’t really been pushed in 8 or so years. The market that enjoys GTA doesn’t do it for the setting, they enjoy the 3D gameplay and translating that gameplay back into a 2D top-down will likely not garner the same success even if you applied the same marketing money and time to it (not that they did).
It’s the same with Madworld. It’s a niche game even on a hardcore system – why didn’t The Club sell well (for example) and would do even worse on a non-hardcore platform.
The ’story inside the story’ is that the Wii and DS are majorly owned by casual gamers. You need to market a hardcore game well (or adopt a certain aesthetic) for it to be successful in those target markets. You also need to realise that not every gamer is interested in the same types of games. Hence why you have aviation enthusiasts, train simulators etc…. those are hardcore games but they won’t sell to all hardcore players…. and they’ll sell even fewer if you change the traditional ‘playstyle’ and platform they were hosted on.
Therefore, i declare this doom and gloom scare to be over!
*By playstyle i mean 3D vs 2D…. FPS vs turn-based etc.
2 Responses to “Hardcore gamers not buying hardcore games?”
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Kylie Batt Says:
April 20th, 2010 at 6:46 pmКакие нужные слова… супер, замечательная мысль…
First off:
The installed base of the DS in the U.S. is 30 million units. The in… -
Kylie Batt Says:
April 21st, 2010 at 1:48 pmУспокойтесь!…
First off:
The installed base of the DS in the U.S. is 30 million units. The installed base of the Wii in the U.S. just crossed 20 million […….
