At the 2006 Montreal International Games Summit, Reggie Fils-Aimé, president of Nintendo America, talked about the Wii (what else?) and how not only were they looking to attract the current gamer, but to get the non-gamer involved as well, such as many women. On one hand, it is great that Nintendo is actually looking at women as a market and aren't trying to get them to buy the games traditionally thought of as "girl games," and yet it also seems like he thinks no women gamers are out there - at least according to this one article.

From the article:

Except that the Wii isn't being given to women. It's being given to men to give to women. In some sort of crazy, gender-based, gaming colonialism, Nintendo's new system isn't being marketed toward women themselves, but to their sons, boyfriends, fathers. Women, like other family members, are only then invited to play along.

As part of Reggie's keynote, he showed a slide of images of all the new gamers the Wii would attract, come launch day. Of the five images, all showed women playing. But these women weren't alone. And in the new Wii commercial Reggie played for the crowd, in which two Japanese men travel the country ceremoniously handing the remote over to American families, women were only background participants, never the official recipients of the Wii.

Does marketing "easy" gameplay to women hold water? Maybe, maybe not. What's certain though is that, even as Nintendo looks toward its female market, they still consider women as secondary gamers. How many more generations of consoles will it take before women get to hold the controls?

Read the full article over at joystiq.com