ESA provides 'Essential Facts' for stat-hungry E3 attendees
PSP Go? More like PSP No. Kojima's new project? Booooring. We know what you guys want from E3 2009 -- cold hard facts about gamer demographics, presented in a cold, hard manner.
Look no further than the ESA's helpful annual pamphlet, the aptly tiltled "2009 Sales, Demographic and Usage Data: Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry." This unassuming booklet contains all the intriguing percentiles you could ever want for -- best of all, it's free for the taking in the E3 press room. At least, we think it was free. We didn't check. We might be thieves.
A breakdown of the facts and figures can be found after the jump.
Demographics
68 percent of American households play computer or video games.
The average age of game players is 35 years old.
25 percent of game players are under 18 years of age, 49 percent are 18 to 49 and 26 percent are 50+ years old.
60 percent of game players are male. However, women age 18 or older represent 34 percent of the game-playing population -- much more than boys 17 or younger, who constitute 18 percent.
The average age of the most frequent game buyer is 39 years old.
48 percent of game purchasers are female.
12 is the average number of years adult gamers have been playing video games.
62 percent of gamers play games with others in person. This is an increase from 59 percent in 2008 and from 56 percent in 2007.
42 percent of homes in America have a video game console.
Parents and Games
92 percent of the time parents are present when games are purchased or rented.
63 percent of parents believe games are a positive part of their kids' lives.
83 percent of the time children receive their parents permission before purchasing or renting a game.
Parents report monitoring the games their children play 94 percent of the time.
77 percent of parents believe that the parental controls available in modern game consoles are useful.
79 percent of parents place time limits on their kids' game playing.
Top Sellers
Action genre games represented 20 percent of total video game sales in 2008.
Other Genres: Family Entertainment (19.3 percent), Sport Games (15.3 percent), and shooters (10.9 percent).
45 percent of games sold in 2008 were rated E. 12 percent were E10+, 27 percent were Teen and 16 percent were Mature.
The number one selling computer game genre was Strategy (34.6 percent of total sales), followed by RPGs (19.6 percent) and Family Entertainment (17.1 percent).
Online and Wireless
57 percent of online game players are male.
23 percent of frequent gamers pay to play online games.
The most commonly played genre of online games are Puzzle/Board/Game Show/Trivia/Card games.
Total Sales
11.7 billion dollars were spent on computer and video games in the U.S. in 2008.
298.2 million computer and video game units were sold in the U.S. in 2008.
43 percent of Americans have purchased or plan to purchase one or more games in 2009.
