• The New York Times, Wednesday, September 12, 2007 10:49 AM

For the $13 billion-and-expanding video game industry, it's all about newbies this Christmas. Professionals in the 30-year-old-plus industry are counting on a sizable chunk of sales coming from a whole new audience this holiday season, as video games become more mainstream.

Most of these so-called "noobs" will be casual gamers crossing over to console gaming. In a way, video game makers owe their expected growth to the proliferation of casual games on the Web. Game publishers are starting to churn out a wider breadth of games, especially Nintendo, whose wand-waving Wii game controller was designed with the casual gamer in mind. Now that the three next generation consoles have been on the market for nearly a year, the strategy for game marketers is clearly about reaching out to this less hardcore set.

Which raises an interesting problem for merchandisers. Who should storefront operators focus on? "Honestly, we are having to retool the way we think of things in our stores in terms of merchandising, layout and also customer service because it is no longer only the hardcore gamer walking in who knows exactly what he wants," says Daniel DeMatteo, vice chairman and chief operating officer of the game retailer GameStop. For example, the video game seller will go for one motif dedicated to children's and family-themed titles--which paints a far different picture from your average hardcore 18-34 year-old game player.

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