As the holidays neared, I asked my wife what she wanted for Christmas. Normally, I get answers like "clothes" or "jewelry," but this year she said she wanted a Nintendo DS Lite handheld game system. (One Christmas she asked for a Super Soaker squirt gun to be used for spider elimination, but that's another story.) Now, she is not a techie or gadget freak, so this request was truly out of the ordinary. She told me she had read about a game called Brain Age, and as an aging (my term) baby boomer, she was starting to think she needed help keeping her brain sharp and focused. I was well aware of this Nintendo game and the cutting-edge research behind it and decided to ask for the same gift in return (the DS, too). So, at Christmas we exchanged DSs: I gave her a pink one and she gave me a black one.

Initially, I thought that we were unique, but as I asked around, I discovered that some of my other friends in Silicon Valley had bought their spouses Nintendo DS game systems with Brain Age as well. They all were quick to point out that they were not hinting that their spouses needed help in this area; they felt the game could have some benefits for them in the long run.

Apparently, a lot of people had the same idea. Brain Age was the fifth best-selling game sold for the Nintendo DS Lite over the holidays, and it clearly helped Nintendo sell more DS game systems to a new group of gamers. According to a 2006 Entertainment Software Association survey, 25 percent of all gamers now are 55 and older. Nintendo's own research says that "Brain Age has been a big hit with older, active adults, who use it daily to help keep their minds sharp with tests in memory, mathematics, reading, and counting."

It is no coincidence that Nintendo decided that creating a game for an older demographic was important to its future. Indeed, it is at the heart of what we believe is a major trend that will gain serious market traction in the coming years. This trend is called "casual gaming" and has now become the new battleground for PC and gaming folks alike.

Since the introduction of digital games, the gaming industry has focused on people 12 to 30 years old, the age group that has been at the heart of the overall gaming revolution. But in fact, the median age of online gamers is 28. This is also the age of the majority of folks who have bought dedicated game systems, such as the Microsoft Xbox 360, the Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3), or high-end PCs from AlienWare and Voodoo, and made digital gaming a $15+-billion industry. —Continue reading>