Topic: Switch almost entirely bought by dudes over the age of 20.

This is pretty interesting. Not hugely surprising for people who tend to keep up with such data, but maybe surprising for everyone else:

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2017/170428_2e.pdf

Pretty much 90% of all Switch owners are men over the age of 20. I'm not sure which is more surprising: that there are so few kids, or so few women?
Those demographics might change over time of course. The price might have skewed the age older than normal. And the starting lineup of just an open-world adventure game might've skewed it more male than normal.

Does this take into consideration dudes over the age of 20 with families who bought them as a family home console?

I mean, because by "dude over the age of 20" they can mean anything between "lonely 20 years old who thinks they can get a girlfriend like in the advertisement" to "generous grandpa with lucky grandkids".

The methodology of that sample size is questionable at best. I doubt it is particularly representative.

Where did it say the sample size?

The question it asked was who was the console principally bought for. It says that most people expect more than 1 person will use it though. So that does look more like adults buying them for themselves rather than for their kids.

@Dezzy No surprise really. Wii U had a similar distribution. That's mostly the "Nintendo fanbase". I mean, getting a Switch is practically impossible at the moment unless you follow restock info 24/7, so yeah, the early people are always going to be the biggest fans.

If I remember correctly, they sent out 700,00 surveys to email adresses associated with Nintendo Accounts with about 3.5% responding. Did the creators of those Nintendo Accounts even buy a switch? Are men or women more likely to create an account immediately upon use? How likely are either to respond? Do teenagers ever do surveys? Etc... Even the question of "who it was primarily bought for" is somewhat flawed as it only suggest who was initially most interested (obviously more likely to be male considering the makeup of sites like this).

Anyway, lending credence to those numbers I can say some anecdotal evidence supports this. In addition to current core gamers expanding their own play through handheld or local multiplayer opportunities, I think a major market for the Switch are lapsed (largely male) core gamers who haven't bought recent consoles for whatever reason and may now have a family.

For instance, Halo and MK were huge in dorms and the like a decade ago and now some people with fond memories of those want back in. I saw many old Halo players who hadn't played games in years jump back in with the Master Chief Collection (mostly to be disappointed and leave their XB1 to collect dust, may explain some of the low software sales). The same sort of thing could happen with MK, possibly to a much greater degree considering the family angle and the novelty of an all-inclusive multiplayer game.

Moreover, there seems to be an epidemic of female gamers aged 20-40ish who play games daily for a several cumulative hours thst are spent almost exclusively on throwaway mobile games. They seem to have grown more cynical towards traditional games and the costs and learning curves associated with them. And I've found in many cases these women are almost completely resistant to a normal controller, compared to the past. Sad.

To an extent, you can see this in how kids play games. Men are much more likely to sit their kid down with a controller or handheld and expose them to "real" (traditional) games and possibly play with them. Women seem more likely to toss kids a tablet or phone and leave them on their own to play whatever they can find as long as it keeps them occupied. (I suspect we will see less and less of the clueless mom scenario, such as shopping for games like Mario on Playstation, because less moms are interested in buying what they view as free entertainment.)

So I think this supports the idea that men are massively the driving force desiring and steering towards a traditional console platform, in general. Especially in the sense that that Switch encourages family or social endeavors where men are more interested in injecting videogames. But I want to stress that I don't think these numbers mean we should discount the interest kids, teens, and women may or may not have in a Switch. I've certainly seen many girls/women in regional randoms (Northern Midwest USA + Canada), for example.

In summary: I find these numbers more dubious than the concept they represent.

i repeat exactly what I said. This is a flawed way to get a real good representation of the early adopters of the console, yet this is EXACTLY who I expect the early adapters of a console to be.

Yep, good points. 3.5% actually IS large enough for random sampling but it does need to be random. There's definitely a possible self-selection bias in who would've done a survey. So probably not random. Randomness is hard to achieve.

The 'pre-order audience.'

So like any new piece of expensive technology during launch month? Gotcha......

@Dezzy Yeah, firstly I doubt many kids would have Nintendo Accounts, and second I don't think kids or older people would respond.

I do think adult males tend to be the leading group in early adopters of most game tech BUT BUT BUT...

(Warning: purely anecdotal evidence follows)

Lining up for a Switch on launch day showed me a very mixed group. I went to three different places, and while the majority of people queuing up were indeed men, there were also women there and one 13-year-old boy. A few of the women were buying Switches for their kids, and one was there for her husband, but there were at least a couple who were there purely for themselves. So it was a pretty well mixed crowd, but definitely some majority being adult males.

In our house, the Switch is technically mine but is really a family machine. My teenage daughter has played almost twice as much BOTW as I have, and my younger daughter is a fiend for racers and Snipperclips.

Right now, as it happens, they are playing Mario Kart with another friend, while I have to post boring anecdotes about the Switch on my phone because we don't have enough controllers.

EDIT: I think kids tend to be an invisible minority in gaming circles because they don't usually buy the games themselves and don't post in gaming forums. My kids don't have Nintendo accounts and they don't come to sites like NL, but as I said they are pretty avid gamers.

I thought the switch was mostly bought by Ebay scalpers.... but at 300$ its not something kids would quickly buy.

Children don't exactly have the income to be splurging ~AU$600 on a console (factoring in a case and a game).

I don't really trust those numbers but if it is true, all in all I would say that Nintendo is off to a good start then. The common (supposedly) assumption is that Nintendo is a kiddie brand and does not cater to mature gamers (rolling my eye here) so if the demographic that is the most vocal about what is mature or cool or "adult" in video games is taking a look at the system then that means Nintendo may have a better chance at the gamer mind share.

Ah well, Female Gamer in her early thirties here. Bought it day one, don't care about what other people feel is appropriate for my age group as long as it is fun. Nintendo has been delivering that for me for the past 29 years so they will keep getting my money.

Honestly I think the more interesting survey question in that PDF is the one about how many people in the house are playing the Switch. If you asked that question about the 3DS or a phone, tablet or something I suspect most people would answer 1 person. But with the Switch most people are saying that multiple people are going to use the Switch.

I've seen no data that supports the claim that anything has changed in this regard. As far as I know, this has always been true.

I'm not convinced the "90% male" stat tells us much at all. Ask the same question about who was most enthusiastic about getting the new TV and you'll get the same response. It's mostly going to be men. Gender stereotype or not that's just how it generally is. Which is why I think the other stat about how many people are going to use it is more interesting.

Think about it, if 90% of people buying it were male and <10% of Switch consoles are used by more than one person? That's pretty much entirely male users. But if 90% of people buying it are male and a good 72% of consoles have more than one household user? All things being equal those secondary users are statistically more likely to be female. Potentially the user base is split 50:50.

@skywake

You'd need to control for time spent playing to get any meaningful understanding though. I probably would've said 2 people would use it if I'd done the survey. But then breaking it down by time it would have been me using it about 1 hour every day and my GF using it to play a tournament of Mario Kart once every few weeks.
She wouldn't really care if it wasn't there at all though.