ESA Study Finds Women Make Up Nearly Half of Gamer Population

Mar 9, 2010
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RoBi3.0 said:
Genocidicles said:
What does it take for someone to be qualified as a gamer though? I mean studies such as these usually consider someone who plays a bit of interactive televison a gamer.

I'm more interested in what percentage of core gamers are female.
Define core gamers? I think this whole nonsense of your not really a gamer unless you insert X is silly. If you enjoy playing any video game on a regular basis, you are welcome to the gamer party.
But does that now mean that core games are targetted at women or men? It matters because this whole sexism debacle insists 50% of gamers are women and should receive the attention of that, but if only 10% of gamers are women then they're never going to get the representation 50% would get, publishers would still throw their effort at the 90%. Any effort for them to change that would be fruitless because they'd simply not care. Everyone has an idea of the difference between casual, core and hardcore; with a bit of leeway either side we can determine how many of different kinds of people are each one with a most played game, favourite game and you could even include how often you spend on forums talking about games in there for good measure.

But that's not for me to do, I really don't care that much, I can assume that the majority of gamers are men because publishers insist on targetting men. They don't care about anything other than profit really, so I trust they've done the appropriate research to achieve maximum profit.
 

Mooboo Magoo

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Aug 22, 2011
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BiH-Kira said:
90% of CoD player are males, 10% are female.
20% of FarmVille player are male, 80% are female.

55% of the people are male, 45% are female.
Therefere, the next Cod should pander to female because they make up almost 50% of the user base.

See how retarded this is? You're basically saying that CoD should pander to the 10% of the player base.
I puller those numbers out of my ass, but they are more likely to be true than saying 45% of the CoD audience are females.


We should try to attract females into gaming, however, this statistics are bullshit and can't be used in a real argument. They aren't conclusive enough for it.
They take the total sum of all people playing any sort of games and act as if it represents the game industry.

People who play iOS, Android or Facebook games are far less likely to buy expensive games. They are casual gamer. That's not a bad, degenerative term. That just means they take gaming casually.
People who buy games regularly, people who are more likely to buy expensive games and hardware for their hobby, people who are invested in their hobby, who follow gaming news, events, know the difference between publisher and developer... those are core gamer. That doesn't make you a better human than casuals. That just means you're more invested in your hobby.

No matter how much you may or may not like this, the majority of casual gamer are female, while the majority of core gamer are male. That doesn't mean that publisher shouldn't try to get more female into the core audience. It just means that they can't go heads into pandering to females.
I'm proud of all of you female core gamer who show your true powerlevel, however, you need to accept the fact that for now, you're a minority. That doesn't mean you should stop fighting for more female character and representation in gaming. It just means, stop using flawed statistics as this one to prove your point.
When you use a flawed argument, as soon as it's beaten, all your other arguments get less weight because they could be flawed as well, for all I know.

P.S. The people who disprove this argument in this thread aren't doing it because they are butthurt. Well, at least the majority isn't doing it because of that. No, we are doing it because we are tired of the same old, flawed, argument being used over and over again on the escapists. It simply got tiresome to disprove it over and over again and be accused of sexism for simply telling the truth. We don't mean anything bad with it, we just say that argument is flawed, but keep on fighting.

There will always be someone who is sexist, but I assure you that the majority of escapists aren't.
Yes there will likely be someone in any given argument who is sexist. The problem is they don't know they are sexist. There are very few people that will stand up and say 'I'm sexist because women are awful', but there are a lot more that will stand up and say 'trying to include women in Call of Duty is pandering to women because reasons'.

Yes I am calling you sexist, or rather your words sexist.

And like I said, you aren't going to realize you are and you aren't going to feel like you are. You are going to feel justified in your reasoning because, like you say, it is the 'truth'. You do not, however, understand the implications of what you say (I'm assuming).

You call adding representation for women into Call of Duty 'pandering'. Now maybe you don't know what connotations go along with that word, but it means to give into the lower tastes and desires of others. You are literally saying that women have lower, more vulgar taste in games than men.

But lets assume you didn't know that so you just mean to 'give in' to female gamers. Even using those terms you are painting such an action in a negative light. Should they re brand Call of Duty to appeal exclusively to women? Of course not, that would be stupid and would completely alienate their current fan base. Should they add an option of playing a women if you wanted to, given that almost 20% of the US armed forces are made up of women? Of course they should. It isn't all or nothing as I assume you seem to think, based on your words and dismissive attitude. Saying that adding something to widen the demographic of a product is 'giving in' to that demographic denigrates them. It implies that their tastes are less than the main demographic and shouldn't be allowed, and is the exact kind of mindset that leads publishers to refusing to publish games with female protagonists.

And no, I don't think you mean to be sexist. I just think you never stopped to think about the real implications of your mindset are.
 

CrazyCapnMorgan

Is not insane, just crazy >:)
Jan 5, 2011
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Phasmal said:
`But GURLZ no play teh CORE games`.


Ugh. No, of course not.

Well how about we be nice and welcoming? Encourage casual gamers to pick a little meatier challenge? Declare open borders for all the filthy casuals? Maybe stop pretending that core female gamers are unicorns?

No?
Guys?
I think you know as well as I do, Phasmal, is that in order to make it feel welcoming for more women into video games is to completely disregard the general perception of what a gamer is and to prove that we, as a collective, are beyond the negative stigmas that the term "gamer" has attached itself to, and let the individual judge that for themselves.

It isn't an impossibility...but it's one hell of a struggle when this topic comes up and the general attitude rears its ugly head time and time again. I just let people enjoy what they enjoy. If it isn't what I enjoy, and I'm curious as to their specific tastes, I'll ask what piques their gaming interest and go from there.

It doesn't matter if it's Bejeweled, Angry Birds, Mario Kart, Halo, etc. - they enjoy it. That's the most important issue.
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
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mechalynx said:
Well, I've seen my mom click away on Solitaire and Bejeweled. I can safely say that she is no gamer.

I say, if you never threw a controller into the wall or smashed your mouse, you are no gamer, just like messing around with fingerpaints in my youth does not make me a painter.

A player, maybe.
i have been a gamer since i was 8. i count thousands of hours in gaming every year. if a game does not give me at least 20 hours of fun it is too short for me. and yet i have never thew a controller into a wall or smashed my mouse. so now apperently i am not a gamer.
perfect logic.

FalloutJack said:
Why should this surprise me? Gaming has never actually been considered a man's world alone.
you're young......

valium said:
Who doesn't play a video game of some sort? This study is basically saying 50% of the population is women.

I would classify a "gamer" as someone who devotes more than just his or her time to playing video games.
well, according to that study 58% of americans are gamers, therefore logically 42% is the ones who do not play games.

valium said:
I hope you realize just how bad that is. Women can be sexist too, which is what that quoted part actually is. You are judging the whole because of the actions of a few.
and then in the next paragraph she went on to explain why she did it in a reasonable matter.
and if you dont believe her, visit This site [http://fatuglyorslutty.com] to see how badly online men behave.
And speaking from a male online gamer perspective - yes they bloody do.

mechalynx said:
First of all, thanks for calling me an idiot with anger issues, I guess? I applaud you for being a pillar of tranquility in the face of, say, losing a lengthy boss battle due to a sudden QTE.
pfff. boss battle.
how about loosing a whole weeks progress due to lag spike in a MMO resulting in you dieing. then when trying to get your loot back getting kileld by a random "pl? no? dead", and then having to die a 3rd time by a creature others lured to your path. in the same day. basically loosing what you been grinding for whole month
and yes, i just walked away from that. (though admittedly adrenaline shes werent that fun afterwards).

Eri said:
I love people who try to claim that even people who play Farmville for 15 minutes a day are gamers. That's like saying because I cook my own food I'm a chef and I'm a photographer for taking cell phone shots. I'm also a maid because I clean my house.
well, you are. likely a very poor, uneducated and loq quality chef/photographer but you are. maid is a job decription. you probably meant to say a person that cleans stuff. and yes, you are, becuase, well, you clean stuff. now that is not to say a professional 2000 dollar photo manufacturere should aim to make you happy, but that does not mean you are not a photographer.
 

Phasmal

Sailor Jupiter Woman
Jun 10, 2011
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CrazyCapnMorgan said:
I think you know as well as I do, Phasmal, is that in order to make it feel welcoming for more women into video games is to completely disregard the general perception of what a gamer is and to prove that we, as a collective, are beyond the negative stigmas that the term "gamer" has attached itself to, and let the individual judge that for themselves.

It isn't an impossibility...but it's one hell of a struggle when this topic comes up and the general attitude rears its ugly head time and time again. I just let people enjoy what they enjoy. If it isn't what I enjoy, and I'm curious as to their specific tastes, I'll ask what piques their gaming interest and go from there.

It doesn't matter if it's Bejeweled, Angry Birds, Mario Kart, Halo, etc. - they enjoy it. That's the most important issue.

I do think that some gamers are far too invested in an `outisder` and `us VS them` mentality.
I wonder how we would go about changing this.

I mean, I've been guilty of this myself, games have always been a comfortable place to retreat to.

To be honest, I think we should be asking ourselves why we play games.
Most people would probably say `because it's fun`.
I don't want to be one of the people telling others they are having the wrong kind of fun.
That just makes it less fun for everyone.

And (a general note, not to anyone in particular), let's not automatically write females off as casual gamers. A lot of us play anonymously. Recently I've been helping quite a few newbies through their first game of DOTA 2, without feeling the need to add at the end: `Oh and you just got taught how to play by a GIRL, MOTHERFUCKAAAAAA!` (Though that could be funny).

Captcha: perfect world
Keep dreaming!
 

Starik20X6

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Oct 28, 2009
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Isn't that kind of a given? I mean, out of my friends that are girls, almost every single one of them are 'gamers'. Fans of games like Zelda, Animal Crossing, Borderlands, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect and more, not just "casual" games (as much as I hate that fucking label). Heck, in one of my groups of friends the girls are the ones talking about games more than the guys!

Genocidicles said:
RoBi3.0 said:
Define core gamers?
Well the NPD currently classes it as someone who plays action/sports/shooter/racing game on an Xbox/PlayStation/PC/Mac for more than five hours a week.
*looks up from 3DS/away from Wii U* Well shit, seems I'm not a core gamer. And I'm honestly not sure if it bothers me or not...
 

Oniontears

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23 year old female. Just registered to say that I game (Xbox mostly, not a lot of PC at the moment since my laptop's getting a bit old). My two best female friends game. I'd classify all of us as non-casual since we spend a lot of time and money on games and have a fair bit of passion for them. However to the gaming community at large, we're pretty invisible, for the following reasons:

*None of us play MMOs, hang out on Vent or Xbox Live or whatever
*None of us are on forums (except obviously I've joined this one)
*We don't go to any LAN events

The reasons I just listed have a lot to with time (I work full-time, one of my other friends work full-time, the other is studying and working). But it also has to do with the fact that we've all experienced discrimination at the hands of men who were supposed to be our geek allies, who decided that since we were women we couldn't be gamers. So we keep to ourselves and this perpetuates the idea we don't exist.

I've met a lot of other female gamers around the internet. The funny part? I meet them on less game-focused spaces and games have come up in conversation there. I feel pretty confident in saying it's because we just want to play without having to pass the Fake Geek Girl test.
 

mechalynx

Führer of the Sausage People
Mar 23, 2008
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Strazdas said:
mechalynx said:
Well, I've seen my mom click away on Solitaire and Bejeweled. I can safely say that she is no gamer.

I say, if you never threw a controller into the wall or smashed your mouse, you are no gamer, just like messing around with fingerpaints in my youth does not make me a painter.

A player, maybe.
i have been a gamer since i was 8. i count thousands of hours in gaming every year. if a game does not give me at least 20 hours of fun it is too short for me. and yet i have never thew a controller into a wall or smashed my mouse. so now apperently i am not a gamer.
perfect logic.
Really? This is what you took away from the comment? Allow me to show you how I meant it to be read:

[JOKE]I say, if you never threw a controller into the wall or smashed your mouse, you are no gamer, just like messing around with fingerpaints in my youth does not make me a painter.[/JOKE]

[color="{blue}"][Translation]
It is my opinion that you are a gamer if you invest yourself in the medium. If you purposefully set aside at least an hour every other day to lose yourself in Peggle, Bejeweled or Farmville even, the yes you are a gamer. If you only bother to fire up some browser game because you have 5 minutes to kill, then a gamer you are not.

To compare: if you own and use a set of golf clubs and speed off to the nearest golf course every weekend, you are a golfer. If you play miniature golf once or twice a year, you are not a golfer.
[/Translation][/color]

No, I didn't really mean that you should break equipment to prove you are a real gamer.
 

Warhawk137

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Probably worth pointing out that it's much more cost effective for phone app, and to a point PC, developers to target broader demographics, which demonstrates why your mum (and, yes, my mum) play their games on their phones, or maybe tablets, or MAYBE PC. It's very hard for a console game developer to rationalize making the investment on a game that isn't geared toward the more traditional gaming demographic of young males, because it would require a concerted effort on the part of the console manufacturer as well as developers to sell those periphery demographics the console in the first place. Pretty much everyone these days already has a smartphone, and most people have a PC, but how many of those suburban housewives who mostly play Angry Birds (disclaimer: I love Angry Birds) own a PS3 or an XBox 360? Probably not a lot, which means if you want to make a console game directed at them, you have to sell them on the console first, which is a difficult task.

THAT'S why gaming has moved in the direction of things like smartphones and tablets, because as the gaming population expands, it's easier to reach those new demographics through a platform they already have and know how to use, rather than by trying to get them to drop several hundred dollars on technology that has no other use. Which is also why Sony and MS are now kind of scrambling to try to shoehorn in other functions to their upcoming consoles, because it may very well be that the time of a dedicated gaming console is past. Granted, I do think doubling as a DVD player, as well as certain online functions, really helped out the last generation of consoles, but it seems we're moving more in the direction of social interaction and streaming video. Whether that's good or not is a matter of opinion, obviously, but the technology does seem to be shifting.
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
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mechalynx said:
big colourful letters
Well, maybe you should have made it clearer, becuase from your post it did indeed look like it, and i wasnt the only one that reacted this way. You know, on itnernet one must always asume malice before stupidity before joke because thats how internet works. and there were no clear signals this was a joke.
 

Dark Knifer

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I really don't care who plays what games of what gender, I just like games and other people seem to like some games as well and that's a pretty cool thing to me.
 

Something Amyss

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Dec 3, 2008
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lacktheknack said:
Don't be too general. I don't believe that "They're not REAL gamers lolamiriteguise" is nearly as pervasive as people would like me to believe.
Feel free to ignore the plethora of instances that can be found on this site alone, I can't change that. Still, if you're going to downplay something like that simply "because ponies," there really is no point in further arguing anything. However, you are being needlessly dismissive of people reacting to a real thing based on your own intent to ignore such a phenomenon.

Also, I thought that female gamers often ended up on a weird sort of pedestal. Clearly we've both seen some shit, just different kinds of it.
Even women who get put on pedestals get simultaneously harassed, so that doesn't actually change the environment here.

I seriously wonder how many more "core" female gamers there would be if not for casual dismissal and active prejudice.
 

TrulyBritish

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Jan 23, 2013
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Legion said:
I agree in regards to the social element. The whole "They are not a true gamer because they don't like COD" is pathetic.

But the issue is when you get people claiming that because X percentage of gamers are [insert demographic here], the Triple A industry should be changing the types of games they make to appeal to those people.

Activision and other such large companies do not make the kinds of games that the average Bejewelled and Angry Bird fan would enjoy, so suggesting that because they make up a large percentage of gamers, such companies should try appealing to them, does not make any sense.

Adult women make up 31% of the gaming population according to this study, and teenage males make up 19%. What would those percentages be for Halo, COD or Assassins Creed for example? I'd imagine it'd be closer to 90%+ of teenage males, to adult women (assuming you only looked at those two demographics). Using the percentages of gamers overall when discussing what direction developers take their specific genre of games, is nonsensical.

Side-Note: I will point out here that I am not in any shape or form suggesting people are wrong for wanting a particular demographic to be better represented. I am merely pointing out that using statistics such as these as a reason, is a poor line of argument. They are far too vague, and ignore the fact that liking one kind of game, does not mean you will automatically like another. So the statistics mean nothing when applied to specific things such as the Triple A gaming industry.
I'm glad someone wrote this so I didn't have to. This is the issue I always have when people use these statistics to tell me that women should be be better catered for in the business. Obviously, I think it would be nice to have games a bit more female orientated (I mean seriously, what do you have against female protagonists game industry? We'd just like a few less gun-bros) but these statistics don't show that they have to. I'm still waiting for someone to show me a study on the gender of, let's say for now, just Triple A games? If the statistic is the same then there isn't really an excuse to not cater for the demographic (except for perhaps a lack of female developers, it would be nice to see more women actually making games to provide another perspective). If however it turns out that women only make up about 20-30% (pulling those out of thin air) or Triple A customers, then the market will go where it thinks it should go. The term gamer is too vague.
 

Some_weirdGuy

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Desert Punk said:
Some_weirdGuy said:
Genocidicles said:
RoBi3.0 said:
Define core gamers?
Well the NPD currently classes it as someone who plays action/sports/shooter/racing game on an Xbox/PlayStation/PC/Mac for more than five hours a week.

And yes, we are all gamers. However we need to be categorized for marketing purposes. You can't make a game and just aimlessly target it at 'gamers'. You need to definite it's target audience more than that.
yeah, aren't you kinda targetting 'gamers' simply by virtue of making a game?
it's like targeting your book at 'readers'
It doesnt work that way.

If you make a military hard sci-fi novel and expect the kids who buy Twilight novels or those that buy Lord of The Rings to jump all over it just by virtue of being 'readers' then you are going to be met with abstract failure.

I cant think of a single book that penetrates to 'readers' just like I cant think of a single game that penetrates all levels of 'gamers'

Its just not the way it works, people like their genres and different depths, so while I might like military hard Sci-Fi books Jil Shmil might like Soft Fantasy, Joe Shmoe might like mystery/romance, and Alex Falix might like horror.

Each person has their draws based on the complexity of the world and the story, so it would be EXTREMELY difficult to appeal to all of them.
I think you may be misunderstanding, I was agreeing with geno in saying that if you classify everyone who plays a game as 'gamers', then you're really not labelling anything, it's far to broad.

Targeting a game at 'gamers' is just as vague as targeting your book at 'readers', which as you pointed out isn't really targeting anyone at all because different 'readers' like very different things, and you might as well just be saying 'yeah, uh, my target audience is like... people'.
By the very nature of making a book(game), 'readers'('gamers') are automatically the only group who will ever partake, so you're not actually narrowing down a target audience by saying it.
 

Schadrach

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RoBi3.0 said:
Genocidicles said:
What does it take for someone to be qualified as a gamer though? I mean studies such as these usually consider someone who plays a bit of interactive televison a gamer.

I'm more interested in what percentage of core gamers are female.
Define core gamers? I think this whole nonsense of your not really a gamer unless you insert X is silly. If you enjoy playing any video game on a regular basis, you are welcome to the gamer party.
Let's turn this around: Do you believe from a business standpoint that someone who plays tetris on their phone when their stuck on the bus, someone who plays farmvale once a week because their friends do, someone who plays WoW and raids three nights a week, someone with 371 hours played in Skyrim, and someone who plays CoD:BLOPS2 multiplayer nightly are all the same market?

If you are targeting something at said CoD:BLOPS2 player, do the demographics of the Farmvale folks *matter* beyond the degree that the two intersect? Do you believe that each of those example subgroups has the same demographic split?
 
May 29, 2011
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Well... Yeah?

Men and women aren't really all that different. We like the same kinds of things, especially when we get past the whole awkward teenage thing.

Still very interesting.
 

lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
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Zachary Amaranth said:
lacktheknack said:
Don't be too general. I don't believe that "They're not REAL gamers lolamiriteguise" is nearly as pervasive as people would like me to believe.
Feel free to ignore the plethora of instances that can be found on this site alone, I can't change that. Still, if you're going to downplay something like that simply "because ponies," there really is no point in further arguing anything. However, you are being needlessly dismissive of people reacting to a real thing based on your own intent to ignore such a phenomenon.

Also, I thought that female gamers often ended up on a weird sort of pedestal. Clearly we've both seen some shit, just different kinds of it.
Even women who get put on pedestals get simultaneously harassed, so that doesn't actually change the environment here.

I seriously wonder how many more "core" female gamers there would be if not for casual dismissal and active prejudice.
...because... ponies...?

No, I'm just aware that people on this site saying "They're not gamers" is anecdotal evidence, and likely the result of someone with an unpopular opinion voicing it out loud to try to draw out the few others. The default opinion is "Why can't they be gamers?". I haven't seen anyone on this site attack Moonlight Butterfly, Colour-Scientist, Bara_no_hime, or the other girls here for their gender in a long time. Heck, Vault101 basically had a cult of personality by the time she was banned.

Just because I've seen anti-theists on this site doesn't mean I want them all removed because they actively hate me, I just ignore them.

Also, the only "harassed on a pedestal" examples I can think of are Miranda I-Forget-Her-Last-Name from the Street Fighter tournament and Anita Sarkeesian (if you can call that "put on a pedestal"). I'm probably forgetting a lot, please mention them.
 

Lieju

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Jan 4, 2009
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Desert Punk said:
Consider: The numbers haven't changed in any meaningful way for two years since their last report. Maybe you just dont realize how unchanging they are.
Because two years is such a long time...

Seriously, there's nothing in gaming that inherently makes it appeal more to men than women, just like there's nothing in movies or books that do.
 

BlackMageBob

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Strazdas said:
mechalynx said:
big colourful letters
Well, maybe you should have made it clearer, becuase from your post it did indeed look like it, and i wasnt the only one that reacted this way. You know, on itnernet one must always asume malice before stupidity before joke because thats how internet works. and there were no clear signals this was a joke.
That outlook is a quick way to raise your bloodpressure. I prefer stupidity>levity>troll>malice, but you know. I have superiority issues.

This report is kinda misleading because the total demographics data set ignores amount spent per player, per game, per dev cycle. Since that is those are the key datapoints driving development, this won't really change anything, and without them here, we don't have real, concrete data available for the debate/flamewar occuring.

To provide an easily notable issue of the "casual" crowd, they tend to not buy frequently, and they tend to not update with hardware refreshes, or new versions of games. We saw this with the Wii and Wii U. The Wii was priced at the level of most common appliances or entertainment devices...and was purchased and played as such. A one-time buy, with most purchasers not needing or wanting a new console. Especially with the massive increase in price.

I think it was said earlier, but the "Hardcore" label applies to purchase and playing habits, not genre. Two buys a month, five or more hours a week. If it were anything but the gaming community, we'd just call ourselves hobbyists, but that brings up images of a elderly couple building model trains, not a dude with a tactical beard and painstakingly rendered digi-cam squaring off in a shootout with a chick sporting the latest overpriced, progressively rendered tactical ponytail.