Sony to aim for 'slightly younger demographic' with PS3

Expect a lot more family-friendly gaming to hit the PS3 soon. A new interview with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe CEO Jim Ryan reveals the company's move towards a "slightly younger demographic" in the coming years.

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Expect a lot more family-friendly gaming to hit the PS3 soon. A new interview with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe CEO Jim Ryan reveals the company's move towards a "slightly younger demographic" in the coming years, thanks to the console's more attractive price point.

"There's some quite interesting stuff happening in a number of areas which would allow us to open up a market that we accessed pretty successfully on both PS1 and PS3 but haven’t yet got to on PS3," Ryan said.

Historically, the company has pursued younger gamers whenever it felt it had reached a mainstream price point. For example, during the final years of the PSP's life, SCEA launched the "Marcus" campaign, which asked younger gamers to "step your game up."

The PS3 is $249, which is not quite the mainstream sub-$200 price point yet, but PS3 is inching closer to that magical number. "If you look back at the history on PS1, PS2 the vast majority of the business that we did on both those platforms was done at the sub £129 price points," Ryan told Official PlayStation Magazine UK. "Now we’ve only got to £199 in the UK a couple of month back so you can see there’s still a lot of PS3’s potentially to be sold."

Of course, Sony isn't giving up on the hardcore gamer. "The core gamer will absolutely not be neglected," Ryan noted. However, with Sony's big franchises having reached threequels this year, we'll probably have to wait until 2013 and beyond to see the return of Nathan Drake, the Helghast, and other Sony icons for the older gamer.

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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  • reply
    December 5, 2011 6:00 AM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Sony to aim for 'slightly younger demographic' with PS3.

    Expect a lot more family-friendly gaming to hit the PS3 soon. A new interview with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe CEO Jim Ryan reveals the company's move towards a "slightly younger demographic" in the coming years.

    • reply
      December 5, 2011 6:01 AM

      :/ Half the reason I love it is this is the console without most of the kiddy shit :/

      • reply
        December 5, 2011 6:04 AM

        meh, unless you have a wii, you can ignore all the kiddy shit and still have a great catalogue of mature titles.

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          December 5, 2011 6:08 AM

          Yes, currently you can - let's hope they keep the focus that way. There's a reason I don't own and likely won't own any Nintendo products for the future.

          • reply
            December 5, 2011 7:12 AM

            i doubt this means they are switching focus, more they are just going to pump more effort into the kiddie demographic. i cant imagine that would require them to take resources away from the stuff they do traditionally. its probably going to be more of a feeler experiment. a few titles to test the waters and see if it warrants a full studio rollout or something.

    • reply
      December 5, 2011 7:19 AM

      Are they planning to focus the kid-centric games around the Move? Last I checked, PS3 controllers weren't exactly kid-friendly.

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