The NPD Group, a consumer and retail information gatherer has build up a nice collection of statistics about how we game, when we game, who we are, and why.
It seems that gaming is a popular past-time. But we all knew that right? That is why we are here and probably why you, the reader, are reading this.
The NPD Group is at Microsoft's Gamefest (being held now) and gave a talk about the US gaming market. Anita Frazier tossed out many interesting data points about the market. One of the attendies, Ozymandias, posted a link to some of these data points.
General demographics and statistics:
What are we playing?
Where we getting it?
Mobile Gaming?
Where do we all fit?
How serious are we?
Do we know what we want?
Great data points by Ozymandias. We now know how we all fit together in this gaming world.
All statistics gathered by the NPD Group.
Thanks to TANK for finding this information
It seems that gaming is a popular past-time. But we all knew that right? That is why we are here and probably why you, the reader, are reading this.
The NPD Group is at Microsoft's Gamefest (being held now) and gave a talk about the US gaming market. Anita Frazier tossed out many interesting data points about the market. One of the attendies, Ozymandias, posted a link to some of these data points.
General demographics and statistics:
- NPD covers US game market with combination of retail sales and consumer panel data
- YTD US Game industry +7% to 5.4B (with Q4 spike still ahead)
- Q: Why Q4? A: 50-60% of sales in Q4 are for gift-giving purposes
- Survey: of 13-44 year olds:
- Roughly 33% play games online
- Roughly 33% play games offline
- Roughly 33% don't play games at all
What are we playing?
- PC dominates online play at over 75%
- Puzzle/arcade/word games dominate PC online play at over 70%
- 60% of gamers are willing to pay to play online (if content is of interest)
- Xbox 360 raised console online play bar
PS2 - 51% online capable titles actually played online by users during sample time
Xbox - 55% online capable titles actually played online
360 - 84% online capable titles played online
(Unclear what "online capable" is. Probably multiplayer support.)
Where we getting it?
- 92% of sales occurred in traditional stores
- 7% of sales occured online (.com)
- 1% of sales occured in a catalog
- Walmart/[Gamestop/EB Games]/Best Buy/Target = 74% retail sales
- Video game console penetration still below 40% in US
Mobile Gaming?
- Potential of mobile gaming huge - 140M game capable cell phones in hands of US consumers today... but far from saturated
- 30% already play mobile games on their phone
- Average price of downloaded game: 5.31
- Average game session: 11 minuutes
- Number one reason to play games on cell phone: to kill time
Where do we all fit?
- 18-34 year old male - is this really the "core gamer"? (Measured by unit sales)
- 18-34 = 28% of market (aka "core gamer")
- kids 9-12 = 24% (almost as large as core gamer)
- teenage 13-17 = 18% (kids + teens = larger than core gamer... surprise!)
How serious are we?
- Player Segmentation Insights: (By behavior - what/how do they play):
- Heavy Gamers - 3.6M people - 3% of system owners
- Avid Console Gamers - 32.7M people - 28% of system owners
- Mass Market - 24.9M people - 22% of system owners (GTA, Kingdom Hearts, etc.)
- Prefer Portable - 14.7M people - 13% of system owners
- Secondary Gamers - 10.1M people - 9% of system owners (play alongside of other people in HH)
- Infrequent Gamers - 8.8M people - 8% of system owners
- Non-players - 19M people - 17% of system owners (already have systems in home, but rarely play. Not finding content they want to play)
Do we know what we want?
- PDZ - 49.5% attach to 360 in first two months
- COD2 - 84% attach to 360 in first two months (highest)
Great data points by Ozymandias. We now know how we all fit together in this gaming world.
All statistics gathered by the NPD Group.
Thanks to TANK for finding this information
