A new survey by the NPD group offers more information on US gamers

Sep 11, 2014 13:39 GMT  ·  By

A recent NPD study has revealed some surprising details related to PC gamers in the United States, showing that 49 percent of the population is made out of women, and the average age among gamers is 38.

The information is intriguing, but seems legit, as most of the people who started their life playing Mario most likely kept at it, and when you take a look at back to when Shigeru Miyamoto created the franchise, the average age of US gamers seems like not that much of a surprise.

Stats

Granted, it's difficult to accurately portray individual habits in an industry that encompasses millions and millions of members. The NPD group surveyed over 6k people earlier this year in June, aged 9 and up, and out of the questioned individuals, 37 percent counted themselves as PC gamers.

Those who consider themselves PC gamers claim to spend an average of six and a half hours per week playing games, and the report further classifies players into sub-groups called heavy core, light core and casual, depending on preferred genres and hours spent playing.

Distribution

The report shows that casual gamers account for 56 percent of the market, while lightweight core gamers make up 24 percent, and heavy core ones only around 20 percent. However, they tend to spend a significantly higher number of hours gaming, as well as spending "roughly twice as much money" on their hobby.

The survey further showed that the casual market is almost exclusively made out of women, while the core portion is comprised mainly of males. Core gamers were defined to be those who enjoy action adventure, fighting games, massively multiplayer online games, role playing, sports, real-time strategy or shooters.

Additionally, the PC market is comprised mainly of older players, as the average age was shown to be 38, pulling up the figure considerably, since the inferior limit was set at 9 years old.

Buying habits

The survey also showed the fact that only 46 percent of those who responded had bought a game in digital form during the course of last year, revealing a significantly lower percentage compared to one would expect, especially considering many reports from PC game devs stating that the majority of their sales are digital.

This means that retail still plays a pretty big role when it comes to PC gaming, contrary to what many people would have expected, and contrary to numerous predictions that retail was dead.