thoughthead

The Xbox 360 has been reported on several occasions as having an alarmingly high attach rate. Typically this is seen as a good thing, but somehow this has been construed to mean that the only people who’ve bought Xbox 360s are the hardcore gamers willing to buy lots of new games. The speculation is that the console is being neglected by the casual gamer and other hard to reach demographics (meant to imply that it’s reaching critical mass). Personally, I believe it’s something completely different.

There’s no denying that much of the idle chat between friends and co-workers is about the new episodes of whatever show that were on TV last night, or the new movie that just arrived in theaters, or the sports game from the night before. Newness breeds conversation, it’s rare that you’d find your co-workers talking about TV reruns or some movie that just hit VHS at the water-cooler. Similarly buying a game when it first hits stores is akin to seeing the latest show or sports game. If you’re not there when it drops you wont be there to share the excitement with the rest of the community.

Playing Video games has become more then just sitting in a dark room playing by yourself. Much of today’s games, and more specifically today’s consoles are based around multiplayer and beyond that a gaming community. Even if you only play single player adventure games the new crop of consoles brings the community aspect into it as well by allowing you to view each others stats, and communicate with other gamers easily. Also many games are taking advantage of this new connectivity by creating new multiplayer experiences. For instance the Japanese RPG “Enchanted Arms” would normally be just a single player experience, but the game features an online option where you can pit the customized and leveled up members of your party against that of another gamer, similarly Saint’s Row which is an open ended GTA style game allows you to go online to create your own gang wars, and other fun social crimes.

With the added attention to the online and community aspects it becomes important to even casual gamers to own the game when it first comes out, much like seeing a TV show on the first night it airs, or seeing a movie the first week it opens. Theres an excitement about it and the community surrounding it is at its peak. Some games will stay strong for quite some time, the Counter Strikes and Halos, World of Warcrafts and EVEs etc. But most games will fizzle out after the first month or two, leaving you back to playing with yourself or constantly searching the servers hoping to find ANYONE to play with. Opposed to when the game was recently released and you had your choice of opponents and could find others who you enjoyed playing with instead of just taking what you can get.

Entertainment is generally hollow unless you have someone to share the experience with, even if that form of sharing is recounting the experience to someone else after the fact. It has been said that people are more important then places. You could take that one step further and say that people are more important then any thing, in the objective sense. As humans we strive for that human connection, and many of the games prior to this generation were heavily solo activities. With this in mind it’s clear how many games were in direct competition with a social life leaving the connection between the elusive casual gamer and their console anything but conjugal. With the new generation gaming has become more then just entertaining yourself it has become a social aspect and as such social activity ADDS to the experience where just a generation ago, if you became more social you were probably playing fewer games. It’s these reasons that I believe the Xbox 360 has attained such a high attach rate, rather then only attracting hardcore gamers they’ve converted many casual gamers into hardcore gamers. Where before they had to balance their gaming hobby with their social life the Xbox Live has become it’s own social network allowing for the two to coexist to some extent.

Achievements also add to this; there addictive nature plays off the tendencies of even the most latent of OC personalities. And I believe now that there are many discounted “Best Hits” games on the shelves we’ll see the attach rate surge even further due to those trying to further satisfy their Gamerscore itch.

It’s no surprise that in the PC world MMOs dominate with multiplayer shooters not very far behind. I believe that the industry has evolved to the point where the social aspects of gaming are more then just a bullet item on the back of the box but a necessity and I believe that necessity is driven by demand of an evolved consumer base. One where those who previously only gamed casually are now doing so with regularity and heightened frequency and amplitude. You can’t play games like World of Warcraft “casually” and you can’t tell me that their active user base, relatively equal in size to the population of Ohio, is just the meaty Vennian overlap of hardcore gamers and fantasy fanatics. No I think the casual are also vastly the social and have found more to like in todays games due to the availability of a community.

I think the label of casual gamer has changed demographics to the even further removed more adult and/or feminine crowds. And I think these groups that previously didn’t game at all are now finding it fun to casually partake in a round of Wii Sports or do something with their nothing by improving their Brain Age. Maybe I’m alone in this thinking but I see this as a shift in the market the industry now faces, it’s clear that many are applying the old rules to the market tendencies we’re currently seeing. I question if those truly in control see this as a shift or simply a happy coincidence.