Sony Wants More Women Interested in PS4

[Andy Shandy]

You know Sony, if you want to attract those mystical beings known as "women" or when they're younger "girls" to your console, maybe you should make sure there are less game depicting these people with watermelon boobs.

And maybe you should try to avoid games like Metal Gear Solid 4 where you control a character's boobs in the codec call with the PS3 controller.

Other than that, just have good games and them will come.

But what do I know?

 

[Jhooud]

Step 1: Create good games.
Step 2: There is no step 2.

Seriously, it's not that complicated. Difficult, perhaps, as good games are hard to pull off, but not complicated.

Indeed! My daughter likes it when she can pick a female character for the monster/zombie/nazi/terrorist/rebel scum shooting. So Gears 3 gets more play than Call of Duty. Skyrim hits it out of the park. Not horribly difficult there. More female leads would be nice too (Kratina? Goddess of Butt-Kicking?).

As far as Sony, maybe having a few women presenting when they announce their new console would help?

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

First they get the women, then they get the increased profits.

 

[knight steel]

You know Sony, if you want to attract those mystical beings known as "women" or when they're younger "girls" to your console, maybe you should make sure there are less game depicting these people with watermelon boobs.

And maybe you should try to avoid games like Metal Gear Solid 4 where you control a character's boobs in the codec call with the PS3 controller.

Other than that, just have good games and them will come.

But what do I know?

But............but...........Boobs.......everyone loves boobs....p..please don't take away the boobs Desu

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

You know Sony, if you want to attract those mystical beings known as "women" or when they're younger "girls" to your console, maybe you should make sure there are less game depicting these people with watermelon boobs.

And maybe you should try to avoid games like Metal Gear Solid 4 where you control a character's boobs in the codec call with the PS3 controller.

Other than that, just have good games and them will come.

But what do I know?

I forgive you Japan!

 

[Froggy Slayer]

Just make good games, maybe throw a few more female protagonists into your games, lock all the twelve year olds in cupboards, that sort of thing, it isn't that hard.

 

[Requia]

<---Female gamer

Purchased a PS1
Purchased a PS2
Purchased a PS3

Sony.... I don't think you have anything to be worried about.
I guess it's nice that they're trying, even if they're going about it all wrong.


On a side note: I wonder how well Nintendo sold the pink GBA, DS and currently selling the pink 3DS, and what percentage of those buyers were female compared to the other colors.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

For actual data, in the Jimquisition thread somebody dug up Nintendo's gender breakdown of console sales, Nintendo claims 80% of female marketshare in the console space. If that's even remotely accurate Sony very much has something to worry about.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

snip

Hey dude, just asking nicely here, could you please edit your post and in the future put those images in NSFW spoilers?

 

[Evil Smurf]

Pregnancy Simulator 2014

Is that for the playstation move? Push, push, push! Congratulations player 1 you now have a beautiful baby *insert character customisation screen here*

 

[knight steel]

snip

Hey dude, just asking nicely here, could you please edit your post and in the future put those images in NSFW spoilers?

I'm sorry,is that any better,again sorry for that Desu

 

[Zeraki]

Meanwhile, Naughty Dog had to fight with them in order to be allowed to have a female character shown on the box art of "The Last of Us".

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I'm sorry,is that any better,again sorry for that

Yes, thank you very much.

 

[knight steel]

I'm sorry,is that any better,again sorry for that

Yes, thank you very much.

My pleasure, I never wanted to upset anyone ^_^ Desu

 

[Novander]

It's pretty hard to take that comment seriously when they didn't have any women speakers at the PS4's announcement.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

"We are not going down the route of making the console pink of course," said House.

....

Did anyone else read all these quotes as being said by Doctor House, M.D. as portrayed by Hugh Laurie? Because I did. It make the pink PS4 comment even funnier.

Seriously, once I saw "said House" I couldn't NOT hear Hugh Laurie.

OT: Yay? I like the idea of them hiring more women. That's a great start. And I'd love to see more IP featuring female protagonists and female characters. Do it... House.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

<---Female gamer

Purchased a PS1
Purchased a PS2
Purchased a PS3

Sony.... I don't think you have anything to be worried about.
I guess it's nice that they're trying, even if they're going about it all wrong.


On a side note: I wonder how well Nintendo sold the pink GBA, DS and currently selling the pink 3DS, and what percentage of those buyers were female compared to the other colors.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

For actual data, in the Jimquisition thread somebody dug up Nintendo's gender breakdown of console sales, Nintendo claims 80% of female marketshare in the console space. If that's even remotely accurate Sony very much has something to worry about.

Much of the research I've read indicates that women are usually more attracted to "casual" games [ducks to avoid the lamp I expect to be thrown at my head for saying that]
Now, maybe it's short-form gaming that appeals to the female demographic, maybe women don't care as much for Sony's FPS saturated game library, maybe it's just the boom of the mobile gaming market that's lead to an influx of females joining a scene that had/has a stigma about women.

In general, I'm inclined to agree with Eclipse Dragon; just make a good product.
That said, game development, production, & marketing is a serious sausage fest. Developers (who are mostly male by a vast majority, but I don't really hold that against them) are pressured, if not outright ordered to make games as masculine as possible (see: Remember Me), and get a fraction of the marketing budget if they have a protagonist with more than one X chromosome; as such, the game sells poorly, fulfilling the self-fulfilling prophecy

So let's amend my statement: Just make a good game & stop trying to protect my masculinity. My masculinity is fine. I liked Tomb Raider, Portal, Metroid, Beyond Good & Evil, & many others. I can handle playing as a women without my scrotum trying to escape

 

[Weaver]

"We are not going down the route of making the console pink of course"

*facepalm* Was he wearing a bolo tie when he said this?

Put a woman game designer in charge of a team, and let her call the shots. See how many women that game appeals to.

 

[oreso]

Reminds me of that time when Sony announced they were going to make the console friendlier to black people. I think it was something about black sensibilities, more basketball games and it wasn't all about F1 racing games? How including more black people in the development process will lead to better black characters like Lee Everett and Clementine.

Except oh wait. That never happened.

There's a reason that never happened.

We certainly should appeal to more people by diversifying our games, by all means. But including women in a company's staff is not a magical way to do that. Nor is it going to help if we start saying "this game is targeted at women"; "this game is woman-friendly" or "this game is targeted at black people". If they did, I'd probably feel condescended to, maybe even belittled. And if I wasn't in the target demographic, obviously I'd feel excluded. It's just silly.

Blegh.

 

[JasonKaotic]

...Why do big game companies seem to think that everyone who isn't a teenage American white boy is some mysterious alien being whose needs and conditions need to be carefully observed and attended to before they'll dare to touch their game with a metal pole?
Women want the same things in games that men do.
Making anything else and calling it a 'game for women' will just make people laugh at you.

 

[Beautiful End]

Well, here's something I watched on Game Grumps the other day and made me think about this a little:

You have games like Bayonetta where the protagonist is a cool female and the game is just badass. But the protagonists are often so sexualized (Like Bayonetta removing her "clothes" when she does an ultimate combo move). Like they said, you don't ever see Kratos go all "JACKING OFF NOW!" when he performs a brutal kill or something. (The sex minigame doesn't count; that's just fan service and still degrades women).

Yes, there are games out there with normal female protagonists but...well, I think we're not quite there yet. But hey, Sony, you can make a difference now, right?