The average Nintendo fan is around 30 years old according to new data
Compared to Sony and Microsoft, whose priorities lie in appealing primarily to adult gamers, Nintendo has long benefited from catering to the whole family.
The Nintendo Switch 2's initial line-up perfectly demonstrates this, with Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza being simple, easy to understand experiences for kids yet offering enough depth to appeal to adults.
And yet according to new research on average age and gender ratios for popular video games, it appears the average Nintendo fan is in their 30s, while online live service games are where theyounger audiences are.
The research was conducted by GEM Partners and Nikkei Entertainment, which surveyed 30,000 people across the ages of 15 to 69, and has been handily compiled and translated over on the ResetEra forums.
While it focuses solely on the Japanese market, there are still some interesting takeaways regarding the more globally recognised gaming franchises.
Nintendo franchises appear to skew more towards older audiences. The average age of players of the Super Mario, Kirby, and Pokémon games falls between 30 and 32, with The Legend Of Zelda and Animal Crossing sharing an average player age of 35.
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The one exception is the Splatoon series, where the average player is aged 27. Perhaps this is a result of Splatoon being much newer, with the first game only coming out in 2015, whereas the other franchises are over 20 or 30 years old and thus more appealing to older, nostalgic fans who grew up playing the original games.
Japanese outlet Kultur reports that the average age of gamers is around 30 years old, so Nintendo does appear to have cracked the code of ensuring its most popular franchises are appealing to the most common demographic.
Intriguingly, these Nintendo franchises have a near even split in terms of gender ratio. Pokémon and Zelda have a male to female ratio of 60:40, while Splatoon's is 65:35. Super Mario's audience is mostly male at 70:30 but Kirby, and especially Animal Crossing, are more popular with female players, with ratios of 45:55 and 25:75, respectively.
Elsewhere, the data shows that the average age of players of live service shooters such as Valorant, Apex Legends, and Fortnite are in their 20s. All three examples also have the same gender ratio of 85:15, with very male dominated player-bases.
On the opposite end, you have Square Enix's Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest franchises, which still skew heavily towards male players but have an average player age of 42.
Both franchises are long-running role-players that have been around since the 80s, so it makes sense for their core audiences to be older people who've been playing them since the early days. More Trending
However, it also shows that both franchises have struggled to make themselves appealing to younger audiences. In Final Fantasy's case, this could be a contributing factor as to why both Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth underperformed in terms of sales.
Of course, this doesn't necessarily reflect the gaming habits of the Western market. Mobile gaming, for instance, is even more popular in Japan than it is here, as evidenced by how prominent mobile games are in the collected data.
It also demonstrates how console gaming is being predominantly held up by the older generations, with console franchises like Resident Evil and Like A Dragon having average player ages in the late 30s while mobile games like Brawl Stars and Project Sekai have average player ages of 18 and 22, respectively.
This can be attributed to how mobile games are typically free-to-play and thus there's less of a barrier of entry for kids, teenagers, and unemployed or underpaid young adults.
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