Report: Early adopters of the Nintendo Switch weren't in target demographic

Video game research outfit EEDAR published a report earlier this week showing the results from a survey among US players to determine genre trends of 2018. 

Based on data from the survey, shooters, action, and role-playing games hold the title of favorite genres on consoles.

According to EEDAR, the shooter genre on consoles and PC increased in popularity in 2018, becoming the top genre on both platforms due to the large popularity of battle royale games like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. 

The report also provides some insight into early adopters of the Nintendo Switch from 2017 to 2018, noting how time has shifted the Switch’s player base from people heavily invested in video games to a broader audience.

For example, The early demographic for the Switch was unbalanced, with men accounting for 70 percent of the player base. With time, its shifted to about a 50/50 split between men and women, skewing slightly more towards women. 

The Switch's demographic shift away from its original core audience to its current broader audience is noteworthy, although not entirely uncommon, since each platform mentioned in the survey has had its own demographic movement through its lifecycle.

Ages for initial Switch owners leaned towards those in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties before demographics began to skew both younger and older, implying that families and younger people were not as quick to adopt the console right away.

So who were the early adopters of the Switch, and what were they like? The report goes on to explain that early adopters were often men with disposable income with time to invest in their hobby.

Early owners of the console were more invested in console games in general, with about 60 percent of early Switch owners surveyed averaging 11 hours or more of console/PC play time every week.