Applied Nostalgia: The Witness

The following image is a screenshot from the forthcoming game The Witness designed by Jonathan Blow.  The game is a first-person "exploration-puzzle game" set on an island -- which sounds a bit like a modern version of Myst to me (and I'm not the only one to think that).

The image below was taken from a development blog by one of the game's sound designers.

A vinyl record turntable in a forest?  Woah there!  An example of nostalgia applied within video game design?

Very nice visually, but why a record player?  Why not a CD player or an MP3 player or, well, a laptop with big speakers?  Why not a gramophone player with big horn?

First, let's look at the target audience for the game.  This kind of game is normally aimed at older players, and often a predominantly female market.  So the record player makes sense as a reference, and triggers both a nostalgic affect and a "quirky" feel fitting with the aesthetic mood.

But ... we'd normally associate this kind of audience with iPads or laptops.  So why is this releasing first on the PS4?  Jonathan Blow seems to be taking advantage of the publicity of being a launch game for a new console, and also of having something a little different to the typical AAA games which accompany such.

But surely the primary target audience for the PS4 is going to be spotty teenage boys C1C2DE males aged 18-40?  (Indeed, I spotted the forest image this while researching PS4 & Xbox 8* technology.)  Where does that fit in?

Jonathan Blow says that everything in the game "is there for a reason".  I suspect that the decision to use a turntable is more down to his age (42 years old) and a personal fondness for the old technology, rather than specifically as a visual nostalgia trigger.  However, it's nice to see in a prominent game!
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* (no, against all popular opinion I simply refuse to believe they'll call it the Xbox 720)