Game Consoles on the Rise

Can you remember when gaming systems were advertised mostly towards children and teens? Can you remember how simple gaming systems were, like Nintendo, Game Boy, and Sega Genesis, just a few years ago? Well today gaming systems are beginning to take over peoples lives. According to Neilson and Ad week, more than two fifths of U.S. households posses some type of video game console, a number that has increased 18.5% in the last two years. This means that 47 million American homes or 41% or American homes own some type of console. People are continuously upgrading their gaming systems and it is not only children. Today, as opposed to the past, adults mostly male are buying these new gaming systems.

Adults should be viewed as a completely different target audience when discussing advertising of gaming consoles. With the rise of so many adults buying these consoles, advertisers should find new ways in order to obtain this new markets attention. Issues may surround advertising games to adults due to the graphic nature of so many games today. On the other hand advertisers must abandon their traditional ways of advertisings video games and attempt to try new advertising techniques. By techniques, I believe advertisers should attempt to utilize different types of media’s that appeal more towards adults than children for certain types of gaming features.

Also discussed in the article is the lack of advertising in the games themselves. With almost half of the homes in the United States owning at least on type of game console, as provided by Neilson, it is inevitable that advertising is going to take video games by storm. Soon advertisers are going to be running live advertisements throughout game play. This means now not only does your computer have pop-ups, but now your video games have pop-ups as well. Since many gaming systems connect directly to the internet today, this new feature of live running ads during game play makes it incredibly easy for companies to run live ads. This feature can be extremely helpful and successful for advertisers, but can also be terribly annoying for the consumer. I believe that if a company is going to advertise during a video game, they should do so in a subtle and discreet manner. Advertisers should portray their advertisement before or after a game, but not during, as this could turn consumers away from the products.

Gaming systems are continuing to grow as you have seen the drastic change from only a few years ago. The Neilson Company is launching a GamePlay Metrics later this year which will attempt to be the equivalent to television ratings data for game consoles and will help to provide more precise information about the use of gaming systems.