Like Disney’s movie groups, we’re convinced we can fully maintain the all-family appeal of characters like Mario and Yoshi and Pokémon, while at the same time making ourselves more relevant to older gamers. We will not only maintain but also actually increase our market appeal to younger and all- family players. To explain how, let me take a brief step back to the demographic breakdown I described earlier.
When you say the plus-18 crowd is now making up a larger percentage of console players, it’s only logical to ask, “Well, what happened to the kids?” Or, in other words, is what we’re offering now, on the whole, too intense, too complicated or too violent for a 10-year-old? Perhaps on some consoles but as an industry, the answer is no. They’re still responding with as much excitement as ever. Here in America, our Super Mario Sunshine, whose appeal certainly includes younger players, launched during the last six days of August. Despite less than a week’s availability, it immediately jumped to number two on the sales charts for the full month, and it will easily become a million-seller, joining the top 10 list for the year.
Across Europe, Mario’s impact was equally strong. Unit sales exceeded 300,000 in just nine days and boosted the sales rate for Nintendo GameCube hardware by 60 percent. Now, the multi-million-selling Mario Party series also made its debut on Nintendo GameCube. But I think there’s an even more significant issue at work in explaining that smaller percentage of younger players on consoles. It’s called Game Boy Advance.
We now have over a dozen years of sales history around the world for our Game Boy line, and you can see that despite constant restaging: smaller housings, the addition of color, new 32-bit technology … it has always been a great seller and lately, it’s moving faster than ever. Last year we sold through 19 million Game Boy Advances around the world, an all-time high. And although it’s probably unrealistic to maintain that extraordinary level indefinitely over time, the trend-line consistently reaches upwards. If you scratch a little deeper, further evidence emerges. Back in 1992, when the original Game Boy was all the rage, the proportion of players under the age of 12 was 29 percent. Today, that number has jumped to 40 percent, and that’s on a geometrically higher numerical base.
Younger gamers deterred by cost and a generation of game consoles that, to date, has largely been driven by teen and mature rated titles, have opted instead to buy Game Boy Advance as their point of entry into new gaming technology. In understanding its appeal, it’s also instructive to look at what games are selling on Game Boy Advance.
