This really shouldn’t be news and it certainly shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but yes, new data from Circana shows that – as we told you in 2017 –Women play video games. In fact, more than half of all Switch owners are women. And a very vocal group of idiots are responding to this “revelation” just as well as one would expect.
On June 9th Mat Piscatella– General Manager and Analyst for the video game industry About (formerly NPD) – tweeted some newly released data on who buys and plays video games in the United States.
First, Piscatella gave it awayAccording to Circana’s PlayerPulse (a monthly study that tracks consumer awareness and engagement), by 2023 so far, many women will be playing games across all platforms around the world. Specifically, 47% of console video game players, 50% of PC video game players, and 54% of mobile video game players are female. And all three of those stats are up 1% year over year.
Piscatella then published more data about how many women in the United States own certain consoles. According to Circana’s monthly analytics and surveys, 41% of PS5 devices in the US and 45% of Xbox Series X/S consoles are owned by women. What’s more interesting is that over half — 52% — of Switch owners in the US are women.
Angry gamer brothers react to reality
While many people responded to this data with a reasonable “yes, that makes sense” or “yes, that’s reality and I’ve met a lot of women playing games in 2023,” some annoying guys reacted differently. And no, you don’t get a prize for suggesting they lost their crap. In response to Piscatella’s tweets, many responded with anger, skepticism, and shitty jokes about the data.
Some felt the data was wrong or owner statistics skewed because mothers were buying consoles for boys. (This is not how the monthly surveys work or how data is collected, as Piscatella pointed out in subsequent tweets.) All of these silly theories were not only wrong, but they also showed that many of these guys probably have little contact with real women or, for that matter, with reality itself.
The funny thing about the reactions of these angry players is that many of them are driving themselves very mad. I’ve seen several men post that they can’t find these “gamer girls” and are therefore not buying these stats. Looking at her other tweets, it’s pretty clear why women might be avoiding her. Others asked where all these women were in games like online call of Duty, and points out that they rarely hear girls in multiplayer lobbies. For those folks, I recommend flipping through all the angry replies to Piscatella’s stats and taking note of all those crazy guys making fun of women for gambling The Sims or mobile gamescalled them “fake players” and invented elaborate conspiracy theories about data manipulation and “bright” agents.
Hmm yeah I wonder why women would want to keep a low profile when playing online games or interacting with gaming communities…
The reality is that by 2023, millions of people will be playing video games. But women have been playing video games for as long as video games have existed. Barbie fashion designer sold out demise And quake in 1996 and was the ninth best-selling PC game of the year. (Naturally, women were Also play demise And quake at that timetoo!) So, angry boys online, maybe stop being so defensive and shitty when it comes to the games women play and instead realize that they’ve always been here, and if you feel like it have them hiding from you, you may be wondering why that is.
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