The new data also reveals that 45% of Xbox owners and 41% of PS5 owners are female, too
This really shouldn’t be news and it certainly shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, but yes, new data from Circana shows that—as we told you in 2017—women play video games. In fact, more than half of all Switch owners are women. And a very vocal bunch of idiots are reacting about as well as you’d expect to this “revelation.”
The methodology is merely touched on, and that link gives very little information. According to this thread, it seems it’s an online survey, and it’s not clear where or how this survey was fielded. N is certainly large enough, but that doesn’t matter if the survey was posted to communities with a disproportionate female audience. The screenshot from YouGov in that chain is closer to my experience, but as you rightly implied, anecdotes aren’t data.
So I’d like a bit more transparency here.
That said, maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe saying ~50% of gamers are women is enough for women to actually get to that figure. I certainly would appreciate more women playing games, and I know my wife would as well since her gaming communities still seems to be largely male dominated (her guild has a number of women, but not 50%).