With young gamers on its side, Microsoft woos moms

SEATTLE: Microsoft has won over 20-year-old gamers, who spend hours a day launching rockets and firing plasma guns on the company’s Xbox 360. Now it wants their moms.

To lure them, the world’s largest software maker says it plans to add more family games and redo retail displays to make the children’s titles easier to find. It also may cut the Xbox price, which is as high as $399, analysts say.

Microsoft is emulating rival Nintendo. The Japanese company’s Wii console outsells the Xbox 360 in the US by appealing to women, children and the elderly, a strategy Microsoft says it needs to adopt to win a broader audience than the first Xbox attracted. “If we don’t make that move, make it early and expand our demographic, we will wind up in the same place as with Xbox 1, a solid business with 25 million people,” said Peter Moore, a vice-president who oversees the Xbox. “What I need is a solid business with 90 million people.”