Our video games reporter Kemp Powers went to today’s Ubisoft press conference, which featured the usual array of gun play and sword fighting fans expected from the French video game publisher.
The company, however, saved some of its most enthusiastic chest-bumping for an update on its “Games for Girls” brand strategy.
Tony Key, Ubisoft’s senior vice president of sales and marketing laid out the impressive data; in the first three months of 2008, sales in the division aimed at “tween,” or pre-teen, girls grew 63 percent. Six of the top ten third party titles on the Nintendo DS are games targeted to the tween set.
And the number one third party title on the DS is Ubisoft’s own “Imagine,” a series of games that allows girls to pretend to be animal doctors, fashion designers, chefs and other professions and has sold more than four million units worldwide.
“You definitely cannot call them casual,” Key said of young girl gamers. “They’re playing and buying a lot of games.”
