Couple of points here.

The first is that if you've ever actually looked at data research you would know that it is very important to see how this data is collected. The article doesn't give a link to the data analysis and process as far as I could tell. So yeah. Regardless of whether it's 90-100% accurate or not is irrelevant.

Second point is that this writer at Kotaku is an arse. There are valid points given by these "bad reacting gamers". The first of which is where are they? The writer assumes these women are avoiding them...pathetic reasoning. If it was indeed 50/50 or close to it...they wouldn't be able to hide that well. For every match I go into in any multiplayer game...about 80% are confirmed males. This doesn't disprove the stats because the stats don't go into specifics as to which games are being played.

Third point is that the article says women are buying AND playing. There's very little possibility of them tracking physical purchases by males or females. I assume they're tracking only digital sales and even then they must be going with the name of the individual on the card. Or perhaps they're going by the numbers of those who actually put in their gender in the account creation...even then would they be able to collect the private accounts?

Women playing games have been 40% of the spectrum for almost 13 years now if you look at studies, yet everytime this subject is brought up Kotaku and other sites go the passive-aggressive route "yes women play video games, shocking right", I swear at this point they are the only ones shocked about it

data is wrong

People weren't upset over it or being "sexist" like that tool Shriere suggested. They were just questioning the data and how they came up with the numbers, since we're the ones firsthand interacting with other gamers. But I know anytime you question or disagree with something today, you're an intolerant bigot. Anyway, I question them myself since a lot more than half I come across in game, on forums, and even reading into these stats are not female, and their stance was oh yeah none of them communicate because harassment. So is it literally actively gaming, or buyers, played a game in the last 6 months..etc

Nobody is upset, or even cares.

This is just taken out of context. Most of these switch accounts probably aren't actually women, although I could see that too and it wouldn't bother me in the slightest, but rather moms setting up accounts for their kids under their names. My wife and I do the same and when you realize many children use the switch and don't have email addresses to set up accounts, it becomes insanely apparent the numbers here are skewed.

Yeah? and? Cool, but your source for “outrage” is twitter responses?(a constant source of stupid). Any idea how small the percentile of gamers are reading twitter drama? lol I mean wow. Sources mean everything guys. Anything, literally anything is sensational for you.

Better is this: Rather than “female gamers” let’s suggest an age demo and say “women”. Uh guys…no. All them moms right?

Ah nice trigger-touch kotaku. Up to your old baiting bs I see. You guys really are the stank-armpit of gaming news.

This is awesome. Gaming is everywhere.

I’m not surprised at both the stat and the reaction. People just have nothing better to do than to get offended by anything and everything. Honestly tho, I can’t give a rats ass about this statistic. It has nothing to do with me and my gaming. This is for corporate to see how they can better market their products.

Kotaku is such a POS site, I wouldn't trust anything from them.

Maybe because of animal baseding

Back in my day no girls played video games, they were frankly annoyed by them, now a lot of girls do and it's great, my neice just got street fighter 6 and I can't wait to kick her arse, lol

I have 3 daughters at home who game and my wife also plays PSVR2 with me and her 3DS because she loves 2D Castlevania’s and that’s all she will play but I still count her as a gamer.

My oldest son is out of college and him and his girlfriend play games as well.

That’s 5 females to 2 males in our immediate family that play video games.

People love games.

Man or woman makes little difference.

The world is basically 50/50 women/men so yeah this make sense.

I don’t see why anyone would be upset about this metric ?

More likely a few people made negative comments and this site made it out like all gamers reacted negatively.

Mountain out of molehills

Nerds!

A lot of women probably unfortunately didnt play games online with voice chat/other ways that show you are a girl back then for... obvious reasons. Ever since streaming/vtubing/gaming in general got very popular, we can see that there are indeed many of them. Even some of my irl female friends freely talk about gaming to me and others now. From what I've seen, many of them started on the DS, mobile or PC for league and/or overwatch.
Really cool to see and I've always hated that nonsense that gaming was a lazy and dumb thing that only guys do that most of the general public used to think of.

Mainstream media and Thier narrative

It's kotaku reporting on something like this, so grain of salt already
also, I don't think 52% counts as "most"

also it's funyn to see Kotaku off all things talking about "reacting poorly" after how they handled nintendo stuff and being blacklisted lol

I think this is cool. That ridiculous stereotype (mostly in the west) that games are for men needs to go.

I remember my first Japanese teacher was obsessed with FF and Dragon Quest and I was shocked 😅 most of my friends only played super casual games but she was casually playing epic, deep RPGs.

Most of my female friends now play many genres (APEX, God of War, etc)....not just cute, girly games 🙄

I knew gamer chicks existed mane 🥰 not all females think they're too pretty to enjoy games, gaming is one of the best things in life honestly

Didn't even have to click on the thumbnail to know it was Kotaku.

Nothing wrong with that. Ya game on what ya wanna game on. At least it's not mobile. It's really not shocking though. There are some women who grew up with brothers who gamed and that's how they got into it, or their dad did. But with the Wii, a lot of women were introduced to gaming just as most people started with Nintendo. It ain't a bad place to start. I started a little with Atari, but all my friends had NES consoles. We were the first to get a Genesis, which was funny cause I grew up in a lower-middle class household. But, there ya go.

Nintendo also caters to the Disney kind of style and has a lot of RPGs. Women have a thing for Role-playing, that's how they get their kicks. It's instinctual so, naturally, that's the genre they're likely to gravitate to. Most women I know who game prefer RPGs or puzzle games. There are a select few who think like men and play all the same stuff, but most are gonna be in Dragon Quest, Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Legend of Zelda, etc. RPGs are heavy on the romance girls like and..... The Japanese have a very...... Diverse style to them? That women gravitate toward but aren't necessarily attracted to? Like go shopping with me and hold my purse, but it just looks cute but it's not a future for me. Like some guys like to watch a girl kiss another girl, but don't want a lesbian. Japanese ripped off the whole boy band thing and it shows in their games. Girly men so, figures girls would like that, but they really want a bear in the end

That’s awesome.

Ok now how many are BIOLOGICAL women?

I have absolutely no doubt that millions of women play games. I also have absolutely no doubt that nearly all collected data is bs and not entirely accurate and not fully representative. Which is why A.I is going to f us all!

are people actually upset or is it Kotaku spinning it into a false narrative again?

I don’t really think it matters does it. This info is mostly for companies and who they’re targeting their Products at because I couldn’t care less.
Heck most women I know play the same games as me so even for companies, this info is kinda useless.

Of course there're more women playing and that's fine. That's not the same as saying that women play the same games than men, on Switch specifically there're tons of otome romance games, animal crossing clones, farming games, Sims clone games, pet games and so on, which are played mostly by women, just like barely no women play fighting games (check EVO) and other more action heavy games like soulslike etc. And that's perfectly fine, gaming is now a big industry and there's space for everyone to fit all gaming tastes.

What is a woman?

Fujoshis and their BL otomes everywhere!

Video games and anime used to be frowned upon in the West. Now they're just apart of mainstream culture. Next up we need to make visual novels and Idol singers mainstream. The west shall become the new east!

How many of those are moms setting up an account for their children?