Games to Go

The Washington Post (registration required) writes about the growing market for mobile gaming, from handheld gaming systems to cell phones.

The article states that according to IDC, "cell phone games took in $345 million worldwide in 2004 and are set to make $590 million in sales this year." IDC analyst Schelley Olhava segments the market for mobile gaming into the following buckets: "Younger players tend to gravitate toward the Game Boy, 18-to-34-year-old guys reach for Sony's PlayStation Portable, and the cell phone market has more adult women fans."

Frankly, this segmentation is a little too simplistic for me. As I posted earlier, kids are more sophisticated and are growing up on video games. They are migrating off consoles like the Nintendo GameCube and moving to the PS2 or XBOX at younger ages to play "cooler" games. So I'd say the demographic for the PSP skews younger as well as older to encompass us aging gadget geeks too. My guess would be 10-to-40 year-old guys when Sony gets more content out there. As for women, the upcoming intro of the Game Boy Micro might offer a new market opportunity for Nintendo. Small cute design and a vast library of games just might do the trick...