Nintendo says Switch has a broad demographic, Kirby Star Allies and Splatoon 2 appealing to younger players
During an interview last month, GameDaily spoke with Nintendo of America head of sales and marketing Doug Bowser. A number of topics were discussed, including Switch’s audience.
According to Bowser, the system has a “broad” demographic. While games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and mature titles “skew a bit older,” Nintendo has also seen titles including Kirby Star Allies and Splatoon 2 appealing to a younger segment. A wide array of players are also experiencing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Bowser stated:
“It’s been broad, it really has. You know, we like to say that we want to appeal to players from five to 95, but as we look at the Switch, it’s been really balanced. Obviously, when you have a game like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, or some of the more core content, or mature content you may have mentioned, that’s going to skew a bit older… But we’re also seeing games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe appealing to a very broad segment. We saw it with Kirby Star Allies, [which] actually [saw] a younger segment coming in and playing. So it really does vary by title.
Splatoon 2 is a great one that we have found is skewing much younger, and so our goal is, first of all, to have a gaming device that is going to appeal to a broad audience and we believe that, we’re showing it downstairs [in our E3 booth], we really [are] kind of transforming how people think about play. It doesn’t have to be a console experience or a handheld experience, it could be both, and that’s really what we’re continuing to stress.
And then the breadth of the games that we’re showing right now help us address those different demographics. We’re up to now, 700 titles in the first 15 months of release, and we just added an important one two days ago, with Fortnite. And [players] already downloaded two million of them; obviously it’s the online phenomenon right now.”
Thanks to Jake for the tip.
