@Combichristoffersen:
A guy can dream... A guy can dream... *sigh*

What a glorious 3rd decade it would be.

Strife56

@Netnavi:

Not quite a universal law. For example:

What we teens do when we want to touch a boob: we touch a boob
What Japanese teens do when they want to touch a boob: they buy a DS game

Seinosuke

I find it interesting that 45 and onward the female side is notably larger than the male side...
...Actually looking at it closer, the female side is a bit larger than the male side starting at about 33 (if I am reading the numbers correctly).

exleus

@Netnavi:

Can't have sex and play games?

Guess that's hard to do though.

Guess I was the "alpha" geek...

Cool to the cool people and cool to the geeks.

And YES...the STDs are totally worth it.

Vecha

3028 people surveyed in the Osaka prefecture (or Osaka city) during the month of July 08.

Install base is what? 50+ million? That's a sample size of approximately 0.03%; rough estimate (like their survey).

Not to hate or anything, but this tiny sample in a single geographic location is hardly representative of the population of DS users.

And how was the sample selected? Club Nintendo? Random people on the street? Rather inconclusive.

kazemizuhi

@OblivionVII: That's probably when many hop onto 360 or PS3 because "they're mature consoles with mature games and none of that kiddy stuff."

By the time they hit their late-20's or early 30's, they overcome such insecurities and are no longer embarrassed to pick up even a DS and, heaven forbid, like it :)

EldonTLH

@Netnavi:
..somehow your post gives me this image of millions of Japanese 30+ men who spend all their time playing all the SNES games they had to pass on in the early 90s, having hardcore Super Mario World tournaments and Dragon Quest leagues and whatnot.

Combichristoffersen

that's not a surprise its been 12-13 year old teenage boys that love Nintendo hand held's the most all along, what do you expect them to do at recess play sports with friends?

cluster1990

@OblivionVII: I gather you forgot what it means to be a teen?

Duh, sex. I would think that is a universal law for all teens.

Unless Japanese teens are so raised strictly that they are just thinking about school and career. Then when they have all that at 30 up they return to what they missed out on as a teen: videogames.

Netnavi

"Not teens, not twenty-somethings, but people in their early 30s. Anyone in charge of putting the questions together for their Friday night pub trivia competition, these ones are on the house." - Personally I thought it was a given when you consider the lack of ability to watch porn on your DS in that tender time.

Omnipy

@Combichristoffersen:
*10-12 year old boys

Combichristoffersen

@Ratfoot_Revived:
Yeah. It's hard to get the hang of at first, though. But it basically says that 10-12 year old buys are the ones who use the DS the most of the males, while 32-34 year old women are the females who use the DS the most. Er, at least from what I can gather.

Combichristoffersen

School : / seriously

HalRabulous

And all is made clear.

AdeptVoice

Can anyone even read this graph?

Ratfoot_Revived

So I wonder what 16-18 year old waste their time on. PSP?

OblivionVII

Cue someone to mention the DSi isn't shown in that picture with the DS and the DS lite.

Emiat

@Strife56:
girls: sex with older guys.
boys: masturbation.

VakeroRokero

Surveys... those are sure accurate.

Defoliantonthemoneytree

Seems like a big Duh. Kids have time to play on portables. They're the ones in the back of the car being driven around, or on the school bus, or whatever.

Parents (moms, and probably to a lesser extent, dads) have time to play on portables. Something to do while keeping an eye on the kids playing out in the yard, (or, quite possibly, and like my sister, while the kids have taken over the T.V. with their console games).

Young adults, (like me), on the other hand, are driving themselves to their destinations, and when at home have the T.V. all to themselves for some big-screen gaming.

I do find it somewhat interesting that Japan reflects what I'd expect is true in the U.S., as my understanding is that their culture is a little more mass transit oriented, and thus a larger percentage of young adults would be getting ferried around in buses/trains, instead of driving themselves around.

GnatB

I'm assuming it's because the 30-year-olds and the 10-year-olds saw the best (selling) times of Nintendo (NES/SNES era and Wii/DS era respectively). N64/Gamecube era for sure had less Japanese fans, as seen through the massive popularity of JRPGS that was undoubtedly started by FFVII and co. that was almost entirely exclusive to the Playstation 1/2. I guess the chart makes sense to me if I look at it that way. :/

I guess it's true the N64/GC sucked. I won't believe it though. ;)

Benjammn

This makes perfect sense. I quit playing video games when I discovered girls. Didn't get back into them again until I was married. There is a big black hole in my gaming life from about 1992-2003. I pretty much missed out on the SNES/PS1 years because I was too busy chasing girls, driving my motor cycle and trying to make my band famous. Now that all that youthful nonsense is out of the way, I can get back to business. I've spent the last 5 years playing catchup :)

subnet6

Well, there are very few M-rated (D-rated for Japan, I guess) DS games. And we all know M-rated games are more appealing to teenagers than adults!

BPMΣ

My late-40s mother and my 10-year old cousin both want a DS for Christmas. At least they want different games.

Marion517

@subnet6: Did you enjoy your sex years?now that you are a gamer again your are cutting your sex life by about 3 thirds.

VakeroRokero

@kazemizuhi: it's called statictics. most statics will say -5%/+5% margin of error. It was Nintendo Ds owners only.

Amazing how balanced DS ownerships is between the ages of 7 and 45... younger than 7 probably goes even higher...
Wish we could see one for PSP, but of course Sony doesn't share numbers about owners, just how many the stores are buying...

VakeroRokero

@GnatB: well when you got friends with you all the time...i dont think u really need a ds to entertain u on the transit...

well its true for me since ive been commuting with my friends alot more in the morning..and in the evening with my girlfriend...so i dont really play my DS...till probably when my lil bro wants me to play with him....and when i need my Contra 4 fix at random times.

Kuririn

That was no surprise to me.

Whats a DS? its a portable solution to overcome the long boring train ride every day. Japanese people are busy people, they dont have time to sit and play. So they make use of the long train ride to enjoy and release some stress.

I see them in the trains every day holding either DSs or PSPs in the train, and I do the same. 1 hour ride in Tokyo is short and usually you spend it standing up!

sonaiko

@Seinosuke: haha

Netnavi

@VakeroRokero: I manage to write "statistics" wrong 2 times, one after another. I'm glad one listens to me...

VakeroRokero

That's quite a misinterpretation of the graph. While the userbase might peak at 10-12 year old boys, they certainly aren't the largest user group. There just aren't as many 10-12 year olds as 20-30 year olds, unless they wiped out 4/5ths of the polpulation. It's a larger age bracket.

In fact, in terms of total numbers, there are more 17-32 year old males with a DS than there are 7-16 year olds.
And If I had to have a rough guess, the total for 40+ females (So anyone from the age of 40-74) looks to about the same size as the 7-16 y.o. boys.

It all depends o how you appeal to the age groups. The 40 y.o.'s gaming habits aren't going to change much in the next few years as much as the kids reaching puberty, so you can probably treat them as one group.

Kotakufan777

@kazemizuhi: You've made the most sense of anyone here, honestly unless this survey is in the millions, the numbers are meaningless.

EvilMetsFan

I think a big draw to the over 30 crowd is you can play it on the commute to and from work.

Most US workers drive, which is one reason it's not as popular.

Tyrannical

@EvilMetsFan: I mean the same can be said about any graph you see on tv. Most polls for the current election get 3-5,000 respondents. Out of an eligible voter populace of well over 200,000,000. Its a random sampling which is always not super scientific, but it still can show trends.

I do agree with the whole commuter lifestyle. Never saw another DS or PSP when I lived in the states, now on the Ubahn to work I see a few of each (and have even scored some multiplayer action)

tmsoftworks

@Ratfoot_Revived:
Wee boys play ds .. Big men play 360.

ikiddo

@VakeroRokero: Yeah, I enjoyed it, but like I said, I'm married now. ;)

subnet6

@Kotakufan777:
They are the largest user group. If you're going to compare any other user group, it has to be based on the same age difference (e.g. 20-22) or the same population size (i.e. 80-100 might be same as 10-12), otherwise no group is the largest unless they have 100%. I really don't understand what point you were trying to make, the graph makes it easy to not have to lump people in to age groupings.

valleyshrew

This graph is suspect. It is extremely unlikely that 40 year olds play DS less than 39 or 41 year olds, in both males and females. What is the explanation for that? The 2 halves are too symmetrical, the sample size was probably very small or it is based on guesswork and the female part is just a copy of the male part with adjustments for total number of players.

valleyshrew

@OblivionVII:

Besides hand sex,

I think most teens play on larger consoles these days, or play computer games. In Japan, as with Asia generally, i imagine MMO's are very popular, but there's also things like PS3, Xbox360 which might appeal more.

If you asked this a while ago, then yeah i reckon teens were the main user, but it's declined as the amount of shovelware has skyrocketed and Nintendo has shifted a lot more towards casual gaming.

Whiternoise

@valleyshrew: Yeah, the dipping forty is enough to put me off this one.

Vault

The thing that makes me the most curious about this is the part where for both male and female sides, there are noticably less people in the 40-years-old segment than there are in the 39-years-old and 41-years-old segments. It's only a year, so it seems like the most obvious discontinuity, to me, since it occurs on both sides of the graph.

I mean - there's a similar drop-off with both ages at the ages of 13 and 16, which are presumably when Japanese kids start middle school and high school, or whatever they call them over there. There are steps later on in the graph, like between 44 and 45, but they're steps, rather than a single lower value then back up to the previous one. So what is it about 40-year-old Osakans which means there were less of them with a DS than 39-year-olds or 41-year-olds? Is there something that happens precisely at 40 in Japan that makes you less likely to play videogames just for that one year?

Bichatse

@ikiddo: In Japan its more like EVERYONE plays DS, otaku play 360. Totally didn't expect 1 in 2 households in Japan to have a DS; knew there was a lot, but not that much.

Leanid

This really doesn't tell the whole story here. For all we know from this graph, it could be that not many teens have a DS because there are not many teens. It would be a lot more useful if there was one that had a percentage of each age that owns a DS instead of just numbers.

dobilay

@valleyshrew: It all depends on how you define your "group".
Let's look at this part:

The most dominant demographics after the boys are women in their early 30s, followed by 10-12 year-old girls, followed by men in their early 30s. Not teens, not twenty-somethings, but people in their early 30s.

Clearly these are age brackets with varying lengths. They are used to describe age groups which likely have similar gaming habits. If we take "twenty-somethings" as being people from 20-30, they certainly dominate every othe "group" mentioned above.

Only if you base it soley on a fixed-length age bracket, then you say that 10, 11 and 12 year olds males have more DSs than 20, 21 and 22 year old males.
But that isn't really relevant for marketing purposes. Generally speaking, the type of game which interest 20 year old guys will also be the type of game that 28 year old guys will enjoy, wheras 7 year olds tend to play very different games than say 17 year olds.

My point is that if you design a game and have the choice of making either one that 7-12 year old kids will like or one that will appeal to the 20-30 year old male demographic, you will have a bigger target audience with the 20-30 year olds.

I really don't understand what point you were trying to make, the graph makes it easy to not have to lump people in to age groupings.

The graph is a way of representing a large amount of data. But many people get confused by graphs, misinterpret it and draw wrong conclusions. "How to lie with statistics" is a deals with this thoroughly. In this case, a peak in the graph was interpreted as the largest user group, and the false conclusion was made: that there are more 10-12 year old boys with DSs than 20-30 year olds. (there aren't)

Kotakufan777

"Specifically, 10-12 year-old boys."

Nonsense. It is a very known and scientifically established fact that there isn't any single youngster left in Japan. Everyone is at least 87 years old and dying (or dead). Males are sterile, females migrate in France.

So the question remains. Who the heck is actually buying the DS?

Kaminari

@VakeroRokero: When you are married you somehow cut everything by 2/3 including sex. Thats why I'm divorced. ;)

Señor Cagon

@Kotakufan777: "10-12 year-old boys. After that, though, it gets interesting. The most dominant demographics after the boys are women in their early 30s, followed by 10-12 year-old girls, followed by men in their early 30s". I think Luke's just using layman's terms to explain the graph. Saying "The groups of 10, 11, and 12 year old boys who own a DS are the largest, followed by the groups of female owners aged 33, 32, and 34." Scientifically correct, but not very good penmanship, is it?

Whether this is a representative survey with enough scientific rigour to withstand peer-review... Now that's another matter.

Gaff

@AdeptVoice:
Seriously. Now I know why I hate almost every game on the DS. I would imagine the same effect for the Wii.

The games might be good, but they are not aimed at me, coincidentally, I don't enjoy those games.

Qix213

@Ratfoot_Revived: It's pretty easy, each slice of the graph is an age bracket and then the blue is boys and the pink is girls. A bigger version would make it easier. These are based on population pyramids: [en.wikipedia.org]

I always thought it was funny that the name for one section (eg. boys 10-12) is age-sex cohort, it just sounds so lullzy.

i.of.the.storm

@Emiat: Cue someone to mention that no one owns a DSi yet...

i.of.the.storm

Ample proof that parents are using video games to babysit their kids

Starplate

I'm 22 and I own a DS Lite. Originally owned an original DS. I only have one good friend that owns a DS. He's 20.

serotoninzero

@exleus: That was the first thing that I noticed. Look at the ratio between men and women for ~65 and up. That's ridiculous. The second thing I noticed were these weird discontinuities. There are these huge jumps (in both men and women) between 44/45, 54/55, and 64/65. It's like there's this rule where, when you turn 55 you gotta through away all your video games. But then when they turn 57, some of them are all like, "I miss my DS".

shimage

@valleyshrew: i agree with you

Tarv

@Seinosuke:

Hilarious!

You deserve a sticker!

Mact

@tmsoftworks: Yeah, if you went by polls in 2004, Kerry should have won. And don't forget way back in the day, "Dewey Beats Truman."

RawSteelUT

My sister's ex's mom used to do nothing but play Brain Age all day, she'd run the battery dead on her DS then work on his sisters then work on his.

Shaoko

When I was in Japan, I saw people of all ages using a DS all over the place, especially on trains and subways and in cafes.

As for myself I'm 29 and I take my DS with me every where I go.

evilonion

@HalRabulous:

That probably is the case actually...
Most japanese kids are very serious when it comes to school in late middle school and high school.

Bluesnow222

@EvilMetsFan: Completely untrue. Statistical sampling is a scientifically valid (and verified) way of measuring that is at least as accurate as a full hand count within the given margin of error. It's been proven many, many times in both theory and practice.

And FWIW, the survey matches what I've seen in Japan, and I doubt you'll find any Japanese person who would dispute it.

badasscat

@badasscat: I understand the concept of random sampling (assuming this was a random sample). However, the point I was making was these results are not applicable to the international DS user base.

Furthermore, considering how close the results were for certain age groups (with such a small ratio of sample size to population), a similar study undertaken Kanto region (Tokyo etc.) would likely reveal different results.

From the general rhetoric of commentors to this post, people seem to assume that these results are applicable to DS owners/users the world over. That is not the case.

kazemizuhi

You know what would be nice luke? A link to a non-tiny version so we can actually see the results.

@Bichatse: They get promoted? Mid life crisis?

Akin

Hmm, so being in my early 20s I have finally slipped into a void where I am no longer part of the core age range for a particular gaming stat. I understand the 10-12 thing, I can even understand why people my age are playing less, but not the early 30s part. In my mind at least, early 30s is when the majority of people have children, which I got the impression kills gaming for many people. Of course I realize I am talking in one of the places where that rule is broken, but I thought it held up for the majority. On the other hand as the gaming generation starts aging I suppose we will keep seeing the age range for games raising. Reading the last sentence back to myself it seems something is either very wrong, or very right with it.

Ultraseamus

@BPMΣ:
Most games are more appealing to teenagers than adults. Unless the adults are naked, in which case the teenagers might actually care about them more than the games. Depending on their preferred gender, of course.

Purple Dave

@kazemizuhi:
False.

@kazemizuhi:
True.

This graph isn't _supposed_ to represent international DS ownership. Just Japanese DS ownership. Given that for a statistically meaningful poll you only have to have 1000 valid samples to acheive a reasonably small margin of error, sampling ~3000 DS owners gives you a pretty good idea of what Japanese DS ownership really is (the size of the total pool isn't nearly as significant as you might think). Yeah, it would have been nice to have a little more geographic diversity, within the boundaries of Japan, but if the nation is homogenous enough on certain issues, perhaps that would be totally unnecessary.

Purple Dave

@valleyshrew:
Maybe...there was a dip in the birthrate 40 years ago?

And there's clearly a difference in the male/female results, as the male portion sees a huge dip at 50, while the female portion continues to climb towards the next big dip at 55.

Purple Dave

@Kotakufan777:
Way to call out someone else's misinterpretation with some of your own. If you look at the graph, the three longest lines (each bar is _already_ a grouping) are M10-12 (specifically M11/M12 followed by M10). Then the three next-longest lines are M32-34. After that comes M10-12, followed by M30-31, and then finally M32-34. After that, they're all over the place. It's not that they're saying that M10-12 is the biggest _combined_ grouping, but that M10-12 are the _three_ largest groups. The fact that they're lumped together like that is just a weird byproduct of the fact that you see a bit of overlap in the interests of adjacent age groups.

Purple Dave