"The majority of Pokemon players are over 18 years old: data and sources inside"

I see a lot of people, including GameFreak themselves, speaking about Pokemon as if it's a game just for kids and justifying decisions based on that, but actually practically all available data shows that most players are over 18 years old. This makes sense because for any franchise, as the franchise ages, so does its playerbase.Pokemon Red/Blue came out more than 23 years ago. A child who was 6 years old when Pokemon red came out would now be 29+ years old.Let's look at some sources to back this up.1st source Nintendo Press Briefing:Nintendo press briefing: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2017/170201_2e.pdf"According to our latest data, we have seen that the ratio of players in their 20s and 30s has risen for Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Mooncompared to past Pokémon titles for Nintendo 3DS"This by itself doesn't tell us the exact number, just that there are lots of players in their 20s and 30s, so let's look at more data.2nd source Pokemon Go Player Data:Every source of Pokemon Go player data has the vast majority of players as over 18.https://ift.tt/2rTNHbR : 78% over 18 years oldhttps://newzoo.com/insights/articles/analysis-pokemon-go/ : 68% over 20 years oldhttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10209-019-00694-7 : 82% over 20 years oldThere's some variation in the exact percentage, but basically all the surveys and data I've seen agree that over 50% of players are over 18 years old. This should be of no surprise to anyone who's walked outside and seen people play Pokemon Go. In Japan personally, the vast majority of people I see playing Pokemon Go are in their late 20s or early 30s, which would coincide with them being children with red/blue came out.Is that only Pokemon Go? What about other Pokemon games?3rd source Pokemon Mainline Player surveys:Sun/Moon: https://ift.tt/34XisiE - 85% over 18 years old.Twitch Players Pokemon Survey: https://ift.tt/2qdpDV7 - Vast majority over 18 years oldThe surveys for other Pokemon data also show a majority over 18 years old.All of the data available shows that the majority of Pokemon players are adults. This matches the intuitive understanding that children who started Pokemon get naturally older and are now adults. The next source shows this trend the most clearly.4th source Change in age group demographics from purchase data for Diamond/Pearl to Black/Whitehttps://imgur.com/a/OMnK9A5 <- easy to view imgur linkThe graphs here, which come from Media Create, a Japanese company that tracks sales data, shows the aging playerbase trend extremely clearly. In Diamond/Pearl the playerbase is still young, and in each successive game the playerbase gets a bit olderConclusionsThe data clearly shows that the playerbase is aging along with the franchise, and that the majority of players are over 18. In fact the largest demographic is 20s/early 30s.To emphasize, I couldn't find a single survey, source, or piece of data that showed less than 50% for the over 18 demographic in recent Pokemon games.In this light, attemps to justify design designs by saying Pokemon is a "children's game" are extremely misguided. For example, GameFreak has once again made the difficulty in Sword/Shield easier than previous games by stating that children want immediate rewards. Even if this were true (popular children's games like Minecraft and Fortnite certainly don't follow this rule), young children now are not being drawn to Pokemon anyways, and simplifying the difficulty to the point that Pokemon basically becomes a mindless cookie clicker will only alienate the now adult playerbase that aged along with the franchise.Regardless of GameFreak's original intentions, Pokemon is now a game played mostly by adults, and they should recognize it as such and not make changes that needlessly alienate their loyal playerbase. via /r/pokemon https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/dvs2kl/the_majority_of_pokemon_players_are_over_18_years/?utm_source=ifttt