NEWS - Monday, August 16, 2004
NPD Group Study For Online Gamers
The NPD Group today released the results of a study regarding the attitudes and behaviors of online gamers. We’re not talking the ethics of disconnecting your modem after getting stomped in the second quarter of ESPN NFL 2K5, but rather, online gaming habits. The study, which targeted the 13-44-year-old demographic, found that the majority of gamers who play online are doing so with their PC. It turns out that 90 percent of the respondents who play games with a PC/Mac also use one of the three online-capable systems: PC/Mac, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Ten percent of respondents say they strictly use mobile-based games while leaving the above three systems alone. "The seeds of online gaming were planted when the Internet was made available for commercial use in the early 1990’s, so it’s not surprising to see that PC games have the home-court advantage when it comes to online gaming," said Richard Ow, senior industry analyst, The NPD Group. "On the other hand, the mobile-based gaming market - a market still very much in its infancy - showing a 10 percent user base (among general gamers who also play online) is what really stands out. And with most mobile platforms being online-ready, they’re close to competing with the console systems for the attention of online gamers." An interesting note: close to 60 percent of online gamers’ time is set aside for online gaming, while the remaining 40 percent are dedicated to offline activity. The numbers are reversed for both PlayStation 2 and Xbox, where 40 percent of the time is online and 60 percent is offline. Gender was also discussed. It seems that in the 13-44-year old gaming market, males outnumber the females 53 percent to 47 percent. Those numbers are based on PC/Mac users. If we’re talking PlayStation 2 and Xbox, the numbers get tweaked to 88 percent male and 12 percent female. It turns out that I am a huge time waster. The average amount of time playing games online (all three platforms) is 6.1 hours per week. I sometimes go through 6.1 hours a day! The average offline time averaged out to five hours per week which is about one hour less than the average for online gaming.Source: http://www.ign.com
