Sony: We don’t want the senior citizen gamers

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Richard Clark

Richard Clark is the Founding Editor of Christ and Pop Culture. He is also the managing editor of Gamechurch and a freelance writer for Unwinnable, Paste, and other outlets. He lives with his wife in Louisville, KY and has a MA in Theology and the Arts from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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3 Comments

  1. Honestly, I completely understand Sony’s tack here. Wii and PS3 represent two entirely different gaming psychologies—and neither one really finds themselves in competition with the other.

    Nintendo is producing games and an interface that markets well to those who desire more of a brief engagement than anything resembling a robust and storied experience. “Mature” people haven’t typically showed the attention-span for that kind of thing (though in the decades to come, I suspect that trend will diminish—as the barrier of entrance will have significantly eroded by the time I am, quote unquote, mature).

    Similarly, PS3 markets to niche as well. The machine offers a particular experience and Sony’s model has nothing to do with what Nintendo is offering. This is not a marketing decision so much as a question of nature. One might as well ask why Mrs. Butterworth’s isn’t out there catering to the breakfast-cereal contingent.

    PS3 is apples and Wii is oranges. Or vice versa. There maybe be the occasional hybrid or artifact of cross-pollination, but they’re really two different animals. To poke fun at PS3 for not marketing to Senior Citizens is like making fun of Wii for not marketing to me (which it actively doesn’t).

    [fair disclosure: I own neither product]

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  2. Hmm, by “that kind of thing” in the second paragraph, I meant to refer to robust and storied experiences rather than to brief engagements. On rereading once I posted, it struck me as unclear.

    The Danes last blog post..20080802

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