Nintendo DS, Gaming, and Gender: Not as gapariffic as you would think.

[nenena]

Recently, Nikkei Net, a humongous Japanese business news website, did a survey of over 1300 Nintendo DS owners. Nintendo published the results of the survey in nifty little pamphlets that have been distributed in electronics stores throughout Japan. I picked up one of the pamphlets the other day, and was immediately intrigued by the gender-based breakdowns in the survey results.

One question in the survey was "Please list all of the DS software that you own." In the survey results pamphlet, Nintendo presented the top 15 most-owned software as broken down by gender. Among 666 male respondents and 703 female respondents, here were the most-owned games by gender:

MALE (666 respondents)
01. Nou wo Kitaeru Otona no DS Training ("Brain Teasers for Adults")
02. Motto Nou wo Kitaeru Otona no DS Training ("More Brain Teasers for Adults")
03. Eigo Zuke (English-teaching software)
04. Mario Cart DS
05. Kanken DS (Kanji practice software)
06. New Super Mario Brothers
07. Dragon Quest IV
08. Animal Crossing
09. Final Fantasy III
10. Tetris DS
11. Professor Layton and the Curious Village
12. Otona no Joushikiryoku Ken Training DS ("Common Sense" or Etiquette training)
13. Pokemon Diamond/Pearl
14. Motto Eigo Zuke (MORE English-teaching blah blah blah)
15. Yawaraka Atama Juku ("Gentle Brain Excercises")

FEMALE (703 respondents)
01. Nou wo Kitaeru Otona no DS Training ("Brain Teasers for Adults")
02. Motto Nou wo Kitaeru Otona no DS Training ("More Brain Teasers for Adults")
03. Eigo Zuke (English-teaching software)
04. Animal Crossing
05. Kanken DS (Kanji practice software)
06. New Super Mario Brothers
07. Tetris DS
08. Yawaraka Atama Juku ("Gentle Brain Excercises")
09. Mario Cart DS
10. Motto Eigo Zuke (MORE English-teaching blah blah blah)
11. Professor Layton and the Curious Village
12. Pokemon Diamond/Pearl
13. Mario Party DS
14. Dragon Quest IV
15. Layton Kyouju to Akuma no Hako ("Professor Layton and the Demon Box")

Notey McNote Notes

1. I translated all of the game titles that are also available in English. I.E. Doubutsu no Mori = Animal Crossing. Games that aren't available in the English-speaking world, however, I left with their Japanese titles.

2. Note that the survey question was phrased as "list all of the software that you own," NOT "list your favorite software" or "list the games that you play most frequently." Honestly, how many of those copies of Kanken DS were bought with the best of intentions but then never actually used? Probably a lot, I'm guessing.

3. In case you can't tell from the results, this was a survey of the general (I guess "mundane"?) DS-owning public, as opposed to the self-identified geeky/otaku demographic. If this were a survey of geek men and women, maybe there might be a lot more of a noticeable difference between the genders. Or maybe not. Who knows?

So, in conclusion...

The gaming gender gap: Not as big - or as real - as the marketers would have you believe!

Or at least not in Japan, anyway.

PS - The back half of the DS survey results booklet has a section with blurby advertising for all of the top "best" DS games, as chosen by survey respondents. These are: Nintendogs, New Super Mario Brothers, Animal Crossing, Nou wo Kitaeru, Yawaraka Atama Juku, Joushikiryoku Ken Training, Eigo Zuke, Cooking Navi, a traditional calligraphy training game, Mario Cart DS, and Pokemon Diamond/Pearl. ALL of those games are developed and then advertised in highly gender-neutral terms - yes, even Cooking Navi (basically an interactive cookbook for your DS), despite the fact that cooking is still an extremely gendered activity in Japan. Cooking Navi, however, is all clean, crisp green and brown colors, and elegant photographs of food. No weird pink girly stuff like you'd get with Cooking Mama.

Games and software that don't target a certain gender ghetto sell better than those that do! Well whaddya know.