MEA male-to-female player ratio?

ME1 was skewed so much because when it first game out a lot of people didn't even know you could play a female character. It kind of looked like just another dude-bro shooter. Once gamers (especially female gamers) realized the story was about much more than just shooting things, and that BioWare was doing better with inclusiveness than other developers, it started to even out. I'm betting on a 3:2 ratio along gender lines for this installment.

It is what it is. I hope to see some more female players for this installment of Mass Effect, but ultimately, it will most likely skew male (though not necessarily heavily), reflecting the state of the industry, which, may I say, has made leaps and bounds in including and encouraging female gamers. I would look towards a probable 60-40 or 65-35 ratio of M - F players, although one can always hope for a more even one.

In regards to Overwatch - I know quite a few rather good female players - perhaps it's merely luck? Recall that some women don't use mics for various reasons.

I don't really see why the M - F ratio should matter really, all people should be able to enjoy this gay alien dating simulator, regardless of gender.

I like Steve...he is funny and...stuff.

Don't hate me plis.

Chiming in real quick.

I first picked up ME2 quite a few months after its release after my roommate kept telling me to play it. Only thing he really said about it was I would like it. At that time I had no idea I could play as a female. He just assumed that I would know it was possible, but all the marketing I'd seen of the game made no mention of it. I even put it off for a while because shooters aren't typically my thing but imagine my surprise when I booted up the game on my 360 and I got into the CC. I wound up playing long enough to pick up Mordin and Garrus when I decided I liked what I saw and then I decided I wanted to play the first game so I'd know what was going on.

Good times, man. Of course, after finishing I had to wait an agonizingly long time for ME3 to be released. XD

I will say the trilogy's main focus on maleShep for marketing definitely didn't help bring in the female crowd, but word of mouth has since brought in a truck load of us. Heck, maybe several truck loads. If I'd known or been told I could play as a female character, I'd have gotten into the series much, much sooner.

This myth that female gamers don't exist or are rare is kinda silly at this point. I've been playing video games for well over 20 years now. :3

Interesting.. 

So it looks like players who played as female in DA:I are more likely not to upgrade to a newer console right away... Furthermore, It looks like from DA:I fans, the "PC  master race" (I kid) is about 3/7 females - the closest to 50/50.

PC I was expecting to be the closest to 50/50 while PS4 I was expecting to have the least amount of females. Turns out XBONE players who play as females are in the minority, while XBOX 360 players who play as female are second closest to the middle.

This could mean that players who play as females are less materialistic (or at least less vain). I say this as a male who owns a bomb ass PC who only plays as males.

Let us be realistic here, bioware started recently with the female version on the marketing department, in DA:I it was still focus on the male one. Only now the marketing is 50/50 and we do not know for sure if the commercials and pubs in public are really 50/50.

I think it is remarkable that even with the odds against it, there is still a big percentage of female inquisitors. 

I think you are doing a disservice to men here. Plenty of guys like games that are not just about shooting things in the face; look at the success of a game like Life is Strange for example.
That's about a teenage girl in high school yet had sold by the bucketload, and not just to women but primarily men, based on anecdotal analysis of let's plays and reddit.

That's just mean for you to say. You just assumed that if the playerbase is mostly male (it probably will be) then the devs (which again, are mostly male) will make a primitive game because it's good enough for this kind of audience.

Cool, now I know what it's like to get #notallmen'd. 

I'm always kind of skeptical of player gender statistics for games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, simply because not everyone plays their own gender for the first run. I always play male characters first - I prefer not playing myself and I find that easier to do with male characters; plus I like beards and facial hair. Hell, most of my avatars on the old BSN were male characters I'd played in DA or ME; my current one is my male Shepard, who I consider my canon Shep. And I'm far from the only woman I know who does this in the BioWare fandom alone. Then you have people like my brother, who when playing RPGs that let you create the character, tends to make female characters more often. Most fans I know do multiple playthroughs with both male and female characters (I realize that might not be the case for the casual players who just do one run at most).

Even going through the fan works makes it a bit hard to truly gauge the gender ratio; in my experience, it seems like in general men are more likely to make Let's Plays, but things like fanfiction and fan art are overwhelmingly female dominated. If you were only familiar with one or the other fanworks, the ratio would appear drastically skewed one way, but then it's completely opposite if you look at another.

And then when I went to Dragon Con back in 2015, I went to several of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age panels - and they were all almost 50/50 male/female. And in my social circles, the gamer gender gap is again closer to half and half, with a slight skew towards men, but it seems more like a 4:5 ratio, not 5:1. In the end that's anecdotal, but it does make me wonder how much of the apparent gender gap is overall differences in approach to fandom, competition, streaming, etc. And I'm not even accounting for mobile gaming here, just console and PC.

Regardless, I've been shooting and stabbing things in the face in games for over 20 years, and I'll probably continue to do so for at least another 20+. So that's at least one more female gamer lurking around in the ether.

The only pertinent question I have is: Does more equitable marketing strategies bring in more female players, or is it the rise of female gamers that bring in more equitable marketing strategies?

Probably some of both. I don't blame companies for pandering to their base. And I don't lambast them for only pursuing new marketing strategies when that base changes. I don't need them to be a driving force for change. But I still understand why others desire that.