xDarc said:
The consensus seems to be that there are many, many more gamers today than there were 20 years; and not due to more people simply being born, or the wider availability of gadgets either. It's called market penetration, and it's happened. That does not even seem to be debated, instead everyone gets caught up in the title; which is arbitrary and ultimately does not matter.
What's really important is knowing why it happened; and what effect it has on the industry in general.
People need to have a frame of reference, If you don't understand the way things were, you just accept the way things are now as fact. If you don't understand how things got to the way they are now from the way they used to be; how do you really know what's different? How do you compare and find what worked and what didn't? How do you find a balance?
More than anything, we need a frame of reference to find balance.
You've seen what the mass market has been doing to hollywood movies for a long time; gaming is not immune to this.
While I appreciate all this, I think you fail to understand what I was talking about because I wasn't just trying to impress that gamers are having kids... But... Gaming as it has been evolving is multiple generations in. The "market penetration" you speak of is just a figure, a percentage of the whole and with it signifies the acceptance that video games have gotten into our lives. You downplay technologies affect on culture in terms of video games, but it's been entirely prolific into all aspects of life. The social and overall technological advancements we've reached facilitate the spread of information at the instantaneous speed of human contact. I'm 30 years old and I remember the internet in it's infancy, but even before me there were those that were playing text based bbs dungeon crawlers... Gamers have existed since the inception of games and the public release of the Magnavox Odyssey was 10 years before I was even born, 1972. That means anyone of any age who started playing games on the old Odyssey's was nurturing gaming, and passing on the acceptance down the road. As the gamers grew up, so did the level of development in games and soon we saw the evolution of atari and the development of the x86 which brought further possibilities for gaming.
...
I'm not sure what time span you are looking at for the evolution of gamers, but I was a first gen gamer; my father didn't get into it, but I did get a Nintendo at 6 years old, 1988. I had already been playing very basic games on a commodore 64 at that point as well, my grandfather being an accountant had one.
So yes, there is a gradual saturation into first world society, but the proliferation of technology into our lives exacerbated both the acceptance and interest of gaming, both on consoles and computers.
Lastly, the numbers you listed were for nintendo only... If you wanted an accurate look at the scenario, I'd look at the whole picture trying to find the total sales of video game consoles and games. You might also want to consider that economic conditions of the populace will also dictate how much money is spent on entertainment dollars. If you want to try and look at this logically and try to identify a rise or fall in the market you have to use all the numbers, not just one single companies.
