"40% of Xbox Live Users...

[Icyheart]

Wait a minute, where exactly are they getting that statistic? A decent number of Xbox owners and Live users are kids without the means of paying for Live on their own, so the accounts used to pay for Live would be in one of their parents' names. If Microsoft is getting its numbers from the names of the people who are actually paying for Live, then some of that 40% is likely the real users' mothers who don't actually use the thing at all.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

I don't own an 360, so can somebody explain to me how much of it is locked behind the XBL paywall? Because some might just be signed on for things like, say, Netflix.

That being said, either way this is great and certainly helps shake of the stereotype of gaming solely a hobby for 13-year old males.

 

[white_wolf]

There are lots of girls playing COD a relative of mine every so often ends up in a match with nothing but and that's when the fun REALLY starts because I love seeing his face while dealing with his loud obsessive fans (note some boys can also be just as annoying).

However xbox isn't taking into account the non gold fem members I guess we just aren't important enough to count in there oh well I also don't want to buy gold just to be counted on their list of fem players I think their services are giving me tons of crap I don't want then the few items I do.

I do however agree with one poster who said MS might be looking at all gold only accounts but on the other hand gamer moms and aunts who have gold accounts also stand a 50% chance of using their account for playing as well ie they didn't just set up the account for the kid to go wild on if they're paying chances are most of them are also playing but this stat isn't going to get game companies to make fem gamers anything but barbie pony, puzzle games, and stupid animal raising sim games when what we actually want are A - AAA shooters, rpgs, action/adventures, and horror games with great stories that are like we play now just make the leads female and get games with more varied males.

 

[broca]

During a financial analyst meeting yesterday Microsoft revealed that women now made up 40 per cent of the audience for its online service Xbox Live.
...
42 per cent of Xbox Live subscribers watching 30 hours of movie or TV content every month.

That stat is even more useless than the "47% of gamers are female" stuff people like to throw around, as you can use your xbox live for more than gaming nowadays (e.g. streaming). See how they don't say gamers but audience (sounds a lot like people watching stuff, doesn't it), even as they should be able to give a number of females who play games easily. But that stat probably isn't be that impressive, because why else wouldn't they use it?

So, unless someone shows evidence from an actual study and not just some corporate marketing figures, i will stick to "we don't know the number of female players".

 

[white_wolf]

I don't own an 360, so can somebody explain to me how much of it is locked behind the XBL paywall? Because some might just be signed on for things like, say, Netflix.

That being said, either way this is great and certainly helps shake of the stereotype of gaming solely a hobby for 13-year old males.

Well since MS switched over to priority gold I can't do any online MP without a gold account and they have many online deals that are gold only so basically they went FU silver and decided we weren't important for items however they're still happy to take our money for high priced on demand games and dlc just not important enough to get MP w/o paying to play.

 

[Product Placement]

Me -> Gamerscore approx 55,000
My Wife -> Gamerscore approx 600: She plays Dirt 2 once in a blue moon and spent a few evenings playing Plants vs Zombies before getting bored.
My Mother -> Gamerscore approx 100: When I first got the console she played a few of the games. A week later she got her own. Last time I looked her Gamerscore on that was about 10,000.

That 40% of users are women doesn't really tell us anything useful.

...

That would allow us to talk about gender in gaming in an intelligent way.

So accusing people of not being "real" gamers because they have low gamerscores...

Well... the nature of xbox is so that you kinda rack up those gamescore points by playing games. Merely casually playing your way through a single game and finishing it, will usually net you 5-600 points. So yes... if you don't have a gamescore more then couple of hundred... you're not really playing any games on it.

...is discussing gender in gaming in an intelligent way?

No, but neither is blindly spouting out that 40% of all accounts are registered for females. Doesn't tell us much if half of those accounts are inactive.

I didn't realize "dick hats" [http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b258/SpikyBry/080313.jpg] were such an important indicator of a gamer's worth.

I usually call it an e-penis, myself but that's besides the point. Until recently the gamescore wasn't anything other than a bragging tool (there's now some sort of reward system that has been implemented to people with very high scores). But it's still a decent indicator to tell you how active of a player the account user is. While it doesn't matter that much if the person has 10 thousand or 20 thousand, it matters if the account hasn't even broke 1 thousand (easily achieved by playing 2-3 games) after being around for 5 or more years.

Just my two cents.

 

[Product Placement]

Me -> Gamerscore approx 55,000
My Wife -> Gamerscore approx 600: She plays Dirt 2 once in a blue moon and spent a few evenings playing Plants vs Zombies before getting bored.
My Mother -> Gamerscore approx 100: When I first got the console she played a few of the games. A week later she got her own. Last time I looked her Gamerscore on that was about 10,000.

That 40% of users are women doesn't really tell us anything useful.

...

That would allow us to talk about gender in gaming in an intelligent way.

So accusing people of not being "real" gamers because they have low gamerscores...

Well... the nature of xbox is so that you kinda rack up those gamescore points by playing games. Merely casually playing your way through a single game and finishing it, will usually net you 5-600 points. So yes... if you don't have a gamescore more then couple of hundred... you're not really playing any games on it.

...is discussing gender in gaming in an intelligent way?

No, but neither is blindly spouting out that 40% of all accounts are registered for females. Doesn't tell us much if half of those accounts are inactive.

I didn't realize "dick hats" [http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b258/SpikyBry/080313.jpg] were such an important indicator of a gamer's worth.

I usually call it an e-penis, myself but that's besides the point. Until recently the gamescore wasn't anything other than a bragging tool (there's now some sort of reward system that has been implemented to people with very high scores). But it's still a decent indicator to tell you how active of a player the account user is. While it doesn't matter that much if the person has 10 thousand or 20 thousand, it matters if the account hasn't even broke 1 thousand (easily achieved by playing 2-3 games) after being around for 5 or more years.

Just my two cents.

Eh, those statistics don't mean much. I think I have 3 or 4 accounts on my Xbox used by my friends. Who also got multiple accounts that I use when I play on their console. On paper I am 4 guys on Xbox Live.

I know a few males that pretend to be female online for kicks.

I myself have 3 female dummy accounts that I use as slave accounts for cheating multiplayer achievements/things for my real account (which is male).

Hell and it it also doesn't account for all the females playing male accounts to stop themselves being hassled ect.

And then there are these angles. Making dummy/mule accounts and the ability to claim you're of a different sex only serves to skew the real number even more.

 

[Genocidicles]

I don't own an 360, so can somebody explain to me how much of it is locked behind the XBL paywall? Because some might just be signed on for things like, say, Netflix.

That being said, either way this is great and certainly helps shake of the stereotype of gaming solely a hobby for 13-year old males.

Literally everything is locked behind a paywall, except game videos, screenshots and demos (And even then you have to wait an extra week to get access to the demos if you don't pay).

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

Oh noes! That's totally unpossible! Those are obviously made up feminazi statistics! I know because Reddit biotruths?.

Joking aside, this is true. Though is obviously nothing new, "girls" have been "gaming" for a long time, now.

 

[verdant monkai]

Well thats great but I never hear them.
Perhaps they dont own mics? I dont blame them though they probably get a load of "wow your a girl LOVE ME" comments. That and Xbox live is a pretty grim place whatever you gender.

 

[Aerosteam]

I don't think this statistic is that accurate, and no I'm not going to say it's because "They aren't REAL gamers!"
-How do they exactly track the gender of a user? Look at the gender of their avatar or something? Some people use female avatars just for laughs.
-Please don't think that 40% of the people who play Call of Duty must be a girl, this is probably going by people who just watch Netflix and not play games at all as well, hence "Xbox LIVE users".
-Was a survey conducted at some point? People might lie about their gender as much as lying about their age.
-I'm going to take the word "users" literally, is in, people who actually use their profile. "Registered accounts" might be a better term for this statistic.

But hey, no one would know how to estimate such a thing correctly anyway.

 

[an874]

So does that mean there's angry thirteen year old girls on COD too?

Yeah, but we didn't notice since so many of the boys at that age sound like their female counterparts when they're shrieking over their headsets anyway.

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

So does that mean there's angry thirteen year old girls on COD too?

Indeed. And just as heterosexist and douche-y as the male players.

.... :/
Trigger Warning: Homophobic/heterosexist language abounds.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

My teenage daughter and most of her friends are all gamers. They play a lot of the same stuff I like. She's been brought up around games and gaming as a culture. It's just part of her life experience and the story of her friends seems similar.

When she was little, we played Mario Kart and Super Mario Sunshine, as she hit the tween years we played Mortal Kombat (I turned off the blood and fatalities, hold that call to social services) and Street Fighter. Now that she's actually of age to play M rated games, it's just a natural progression for her. Saints Row 4 was the last game she played, though I let her play SR2 a few years ago too. She's played Fable, loved both the 3D Fallouts and Skyrim. She won't play Halo with me because she says her big teenage rebellion is to refuse the science fiction that informs so much of the things I love (it's a gag of course, and a funny one in practice), but she pops off headshots like a pro in her school's gamers club.

So this isn't a surprise to me. It's nice to have released numbers to back it up I guess. As a lifelong gamer in his 40s, it's nice to see that the culture has matured beyond the teenage boy demographic that it used to exist within almost exclusively. Now if only we could do something about the toxic online gaming stuff, we'd really be getting somewhere. *topical wink*

 

[skywolfblue]

You know, it seems like most of the people in this thread are saying "need more data!" "They might be innactive accounts, or accounts that only play Peggle!". Some people seem to have missed that it's quite an improvement over what it was.

So I for one, am happy to see that at least the number has gone up quite a bit. Here's to the gamer girls of Xbox Live, toughing it out in one of the most hostile social environments on the planet.

 

[white_wolf]

Ok, so 40% of Xbox live users are female. I guess that's good since it's a significant increase, but what do we do with this information? We've been given nothing about which games this 40% like to play. Are most of them playing CoD? Halo? Mortal Kombat? Some other game? What percentage prefer different genres? How many hours are played a week? How many play 1 hour? How many play 6+ hours. Do they prefer multiplayer or single player?

Hell this would all be interesting to see broken down for the 60% male users so we can contrast and compare.
TELL US MORE

You know if you asked here on the boards the fem players would answer you however we play all the games the males do. A short list for me:

SoD
Fable series
MGS
AC series
Sniper V2
Yakuza
Wither 2
HL series
Portal series
Remember Me
ME series
DA
Red Dead Redemption
Gun
Alan Wake
BSI
Singularity
and I prefer single player to co-op and can't do MP (no gold)
Gaming hours depending on the day 3 - 10+ hours

But now given just my sample list what are you to make of this data? How is this suppose to help you when designing games the game developers go I already got her money so there isn't any need to make the game more enjoyable for her she obviously liked something about our game so she bought it so why go that extra mile? So what if she might have wanted to say play MGS2 as Meryl I'll just make MGS8 with snake again or better(worse) yet Raiden! He looks girly enough surly she'll play as him (even when I'd rather hangout in a snake pit before picking up said game).

They don't seem to be able to understand how to use their own data or how to make games that we'd like to see that are like we play now I think the developers and the publishers who want to make games with relateable leads for us are having a hard time understanding their fem players because they're men who now have to give thought to the strange idea women have been gaming since the 70's and they now just realized it. When gaming companys have to demand that their focus groups include fem players in it and the focus group organizers say, " Girl players? There's no such thing! How outrageous!" they're never going to make games as appealing as they could for fem players if a fem player is interested in the game they count it as a fluke. They also seem to have little interest in gaining more loyalty and money from a demographic that already buys their items but would like and be happier with more variety in that product.

 

[Hover Hand Mode]

On second thought, I'm going to avoid saying something potentially bannable. Just continue referring to my previous post in this thread. I'm a damn prophet, it seems.

 

[Jadak]

So accusing people of not being "real" gamers because they have low gamerscores is discussing gender in gaming in an intelligent way? I didn't realize "dick hats" [http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b258/SpikyBry/080313.jpg] were such an important indicator of a gamer's worth.

Gamescore isn't something you have to go out of your way to achieve. Sure, super high values often indicate some obsessive play, but even casually playing random games will garner significant numbers of points.

So, his comment is less about "dick hats" being a relevant indicator of being a 'gamer', but rather a statement of 'If you have a very low gamerscore, you do not play many games. Since you get gamersocre for doing fuckall, this is a reliable indicator on that front.

Granted, there are still some flaws in the logic. If you ever play one game but play it all the fucking time, you likely won't find many people arguing your gamer status, but your gamerscore will not reflect that, as you'll only get so many points per game.

In any case, his primary point stands, which is that a mere 'percentage of accounts' is a meaningless statistic compared to actual activity stats.

 

[lacktheknack]

So does that mean there's angry thirteen year old girls on COD too?

Yes.

It was my first try at TF2, and I was assaulted by multiple shrieking girls.

So while I still hate multiplayer, I can't call it "all the same" anymore.