Who among us doesn’t like percentages? Naturally, the gaming industry has statistics of its own to share.

The NPD Group has released its research based on data collected from over twenty thousand survey respondents, revealing that more than half of Americans (57% to be precise) play video games. While this number may be a bit skewed, considering that the surveys were completed online, which seems a likely place to find gamers, I am not too surprised, especially since the survey includes PC gamers, a broad category that nets in all of the solitaire players out there. On average, gamers claimed to play online games 38% of the time, does that sound accurate to you?

Of the 57% of Americans who are gamers, 19% are “console gamers,” 18% are “heavy portable gamers,” and 15% are “online PC gamers”. There are certainly still the “extreme gamers,” those who play an averages of 39 hours a week; they make up about 2% of America’s population. There are also the “avid PC gamers” who make up about 5% of the population (this gamer category includes gamers who average around 30 hours a week). The seemingly small percentages actually represent quite a large amount of people once you consider that the American population is around 300 million.

However, in addition to that, about one fifth of the people included in the percentage of who games are considered “secondary gamers,” those who average just three to four hours a week on varying consoles. It’s worth noting that 52% of the people included in this bracket are female. On that same note, the overall percentage of the number of female gamers in the gamer population has risen 5% since last year. According to the NPD Group, that percentage now stands at 28, compared to the 23 of 2008. I wonder if there are more games geared for girls or if we’ve simply become less wary of enjoying this form of entertainment so commonly associated with males. What do you think?

Source: USA Today

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