Console gaming growing in popularity among all ages
By Jacqui Cheng | Published: March 05, 2007 - 05:09PM CT
Console gaming appears to be on the rise, according to a new report from market research firm Nielsen. The data came from Nielsen's sample of 12,000 television-using households in the US, which found that although the number of "television households" has only risen by 1.6 percent since the fourth quarter of 2004, the number of game consoles in those households has risen by 18.5 percent in that same period of time.
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The new data is significant because many studies previously included PC gaming in their results. Critics of those studies often argued that the gaming data was skewed largely by the number of casual gamers who play Solitaire and Minesweeper while bored at work, but this new study is focused solely on console gaming. The results are also not self-reported, Nielsen says, and are monitored via the company's National People Meter (NPM)—the same system used to generate ratings data for the television industry. However, the data is not without its own problems, as Nielsen does not differentiate between actual gaming use versus other use of consoles, such as DVD-playing or web browsing.
By the end of 2006, there were 45.7 million homes with a console, and 148.4 million people had access to at least one system. Nielsen also found that the use of "connected" consoles—consoles that connect to the Internet—has grown steadily over the years to 4.4 million, even before the introduction of the PS3 and Wii in late 2006. Systems such as the PS2, Xbox, and Xbox 360 appear to have made connected consoles commonplace in the home, and online gaming services are becoming more popular than ever, as evidenced by the success of Microsoft's Xbox Live service.
The typical gamer profile from Nielsen's report was not surprising: the majority were male (77.1 percent), but with a fair amount of diversity in age. 75.8 percent of boys—12.9 million—age two through 11 in TV households gamed on a console at home for at least one minute in the fourth quarter of 2006 (the average time spent on a console for that age group was 2 hours and 30 minutes per day, however). From the male 18-34 age group, almost half—16.1 million (corrected)—used a console, with an average of 2 hours and 43 minutes of game play per day. However, consoles were also fairly popular among certain other demographics, with 11.5 million females between 18 and 34 gaming and 10.1 million females from 2 to 11. Even the 50+ crowd isn't afraid to get their game on, with 50+ females out-gaming their male counterparts with 3.9 million gamers, compared to the males' 3.5 million number. Nielsen's data unfortunately does not indicate what types of games each group favored.
Nielsen estimates that at any given minute during the Q4 2006, more than 1.6 million people were using an in-home console system. Saturdays were also the most popular gaming day of the week. "In the average Saturday minute during January 2007, there were 2.6 million persons two and older using a console," says the report. Popular gaming hours during the week, however, are at various points in the evening—during the hour of 10-11pm for the male 18-34 demographic and 8-9pm for the male 12-17 demographic.
New systems, especially those that appeal to the "casual gamer," will only help household console adoption rates continue to grow, and all of this data will help companies fine-tune their advertising for both video games and other gaming-related services. In-game advertising is growing, with giants such as Google working to get in on the action in order to better target certain demographics. Nielsen does not currently have data that breaks down different types of consoles, nor does the company's current data track individual video game titles, but the company plans to start with its NPM system later this year.
