Female consumers are the "untapped holy grail" for game publishers, European PlayStation boss Jim Ryan has told the latest issue of Edge, which is landing with subscribers now. Speaking in a Vita focused interview, the exec said the upcoming portable's user-friendliness is paving the way for Sony to target a female audience it traditionally hasn't been able to reach."That [audience] is obviously the untapped holy grail," Ryan said. "We're hopeful that the rather less intimidating interface possibilities that Vita offers may make that market potentially more accessible.
"Some of the things as yet unrevealed on the content side are exploring that."
While Ryan acknowledged that day one Vita buyers will be "our good old core gaming demographic", he said the company "will look to... go younger rather more quickly and deliberately than we did with PSP.
"You won't see that so much in 2012, and in 2013 we'll still be very much at the core of it, but shortly after that a lot of the business strategy will be [based] around targeting a somewhat younger demographic."
Earlier this month, Ryan said Sony will make a greater effort to target younger gamers and the family market with PS3 in 2012, although not at the expense of catering to hardcore gamers.