on nintendo, female gamers and political parties

The Telegraph today picks up on a story that was covered by the gaming blogs a few days ago, and that is that Nintendo's share of the female gaming audience is around 80%. The telling comment in the Telegraph piece (that a large number of the comments in the gaming blogs totally fail to comprehend) is

"This didn't happen by accident," said Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo in the US. "It's the result of a deliberate attempt to expand the market."

For a while now I've been following the output of Sean Malstrom who relentlessly argues that Nintendo are not trying to be part of the "Gaming Industry" but instead are trying to disrupt the Gaming Industry. He explains this particularly well in his essay Birdmen and the Casual Fallacy (tea and biscuits required). Nintendo, especially with the Wii, are not trying to compete on the same terms as Microsoft or Sony for an ever shrinking target market. Instead they have looked to expand their audience by making their console attractive to people who are traditionally not considered gamers. Wii Fit is not a "Gaming Industry" game but it was sold out for most of it's first 12 months of release and has been instrumental in selling millions of Wii and selling the idea of gaming to millions of people who previously wouldn't have considered themselves gamers.

I wonder if there is a lesson to be learned here for political parties. For too long the interest in politics has dwindled as the population switches off from the inward looking "Politics Industry" with it's associated media reviewers that are always hyping the 'next big thing' that we should be excited about. The parallels are startling. I don't see any of the three main parties being able to be the disruptive force needed to bring about change as they are too entrenched, have too much staked, in the Politics Industry. Parties like the BNP, UKIP and the Greens are all eager to join in the game rather than be the disruptor.

Nintendo did not set out to beat Sony and Microsoft in the battle for console supremacy by playing the game to the rules their competitors laid down. If a political party is to change the game, break up the tripartite monopoly of political power, it must look to gather support outside of the usual spheres of influence. As a recent local by-election showed less than half of the population cared enough to vote. The majority, those who currently don't give a toss, they are the key to winning an election but they aren't interested in the game as it is currently played. Nintendo's answer was to target the female gaming market. What would a political party do?