Well this is really interesting, because if these results are to be believed that everything we think we know about Sonic, including Sega’s own market data is completely wrong.
YouGov recently ran a poll to see which was the top 16 favourite video-games of the British public, coming in at number 1 was Candy Crush (no surprise there),with GTA coming in at number 2. Sonic manages to get on the table at number 13.
What’s more interesting is that the YouGov poll breaks down the results into percentages, and one thing is very clear…
Sonic is more popular with the ladies.
This is, really unexpected, for the following reason, Sega still markets and promotes Sonic as a ‘boys’ franchise. Even when Boom was announced, Sega’s own marketing material had boys as being the primary demographic for Sonic with girls as a secondary. Yet this poll shows that Sonic is nearly twice as popular with women over men.
However, there is one consideration to take with this. The poll doesn’t register the views of anyone aged under 16. Which is Sonic’s primary demographic. There is this huge lie which does the round a lot, that being, Sonic sells best on Nintendo? Erm no… Sonic sells best where the kids are. Which this poll doesn’t recognise, where-ever the kids are, that’s where you’ll find Sonic’s biggest sales.
But this is really interesting, since if it really is an accurate reflection of views worldwide it changes a lot of what was considered Sonic’s primary target demographics. Lets speculate for a moment that both this poll and Sega is correct and Sonic is more popular with boys (males aged under 16), after the age of 18, Sonic’s primary gender demographic shifts over to women. This isn’t the natural assumption to make for a character like Sonic, especially since there is little active female representation within the series (generally speaking), there is much more appeal to males.
Or.. and there is no way to independently verify this, Sonic actually has more appeal to girls than boys at all ages.
The full results of the YouGov poll can be found on their website, as well as what was the better console, the MegaDrive or the Super Nintendo, and who was a better character, Mario or Sonic… I’ll let you look that one up yourself.
Source: YouGov
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