Maybe the video game industry isn’t as recession-proof as everyone thought: market research firm NPD has released its sales figures for 2009, and finds that U.S. sales of video games dropped 17 percent in April 2009 compared to the same month in 2008. Total revenue for the month was $1.03 billion across the industry—$510.7 million of that being games, with the rest being hardware and accessories.—and the numbers mark the second steep month of decline in a row.
Tag Archive: DS Lites
NPD: Nearly Half Heavy Gamers Ages 6 to 17
A bit of conventional wisdom in the video game industry is that serious gamers—you know, the players who really get into mastering complex immersive games, devote themselves to online play and tournaments, invest in peripherals and strategy guides, tweak their systems—are generally males between the ages of 18 and 34. And maybe smell a little ripe.
A new survey from the NPD Group seems to belay that impression. Surveying more than 16,000 respondents aged six to 44 in an online consumer survey, NPD found that some 45 percent of “Heavy Gamers” are actually between 6 and 17 years of age—and that 21 pecent of them are female. Further, nearly one-third of Avid Console Gamers (the largest overall segment of the NPD study) are between the ages of 6 and 17.

