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Online Gaming Habits Surveyed

Posted by simoniker on from the person-versus-person dept.

Thanks to Business Wire/TMCNet for its press release summarizing the details of a new NPD survey about online gaming. It's noted that "the overwhelming majority of today's 13-to-44-year-old gamers have the ability to play games online and a good portion are taking advantage of it, but it's dominated by one platform - the PC." Other statistics include online console demographics ("PlayStation 2 and Xbox skew heavily male, with approximately 88 percent being male and 12 percent being female") and the mobile gaming market ("Roughly 10 percent of those who said they play online are strictly mobile-based gamers and do not use any of the three online-capable systems.")

8 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. emailing the survey by adamshelley · · Score: 5, Insightful

    chances are if you are emailing the survey the person has a PC and has gamed on it online.

    this is a flawed approach.

    u need to find people without a pc (no email) and find out if they play online with a console.

    no wonder PC won.

    1. Re:emailing the survey by HAKdragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      u need to find people without a pc (no email) and find out if they play online with a console.

      But how many people have an internet connection (most likely broadband for XBox Live! or PS2s online games), but no PC?

      --
      "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
    2. Re:emailing the survey by adamshelley · · Score: 2, Insightful

      that should also be part of the survey.

    3. Re:emailing the survey by gl4ss · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I hate to break it to you but pc would have won anyways.

      and quite realistically, everyone who plays xbox or ps2 games online has an email account, if you really went looking for people that didn't have one _that_ would be making a skewed survey. hell, even people without any of the devices have email - in the modern world. hell, a lot of the people playing online games on the net with pc's aren't even playing with their own computers but rather play at cybercafes, schools and so on - and that counts as well.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  2. Restating the obvious and getting paid! by ribond · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The interesting thing is the categories -- that "mobile gamer" (cellphone gaming) is now prevalent enough to be a category is news.

    Not really news that all the geeky gadget/console-gamers are men though.

    I wonder where they got their list of survey candidates as well... the article does mention that there was an "over-sampling of males".

  3. Money makes the world go around by Schwing84 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think it is a joke that people using xbox live and console based online games must pay such high fees for using such facilities. Not only do people have to pay for broadband which is expensive enough (at least in Australia), but also to pay the ridiculous fees which line the pocket of fatcat businessmen. At least with PC online games generally it is free to play. I know one thing i'm not asking Santa for this year. Also haven't we learned that connecting anything made from microsoft to the internet is a disaster waiting to happen al-la Windows 98 article

  4. It's not there yet by sqrt(2) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sick of watching or reading reviews for games and seeing that they took a big hit in the score for not having online play. When did online play become the deciding factor for console games, when the majority of console owners either can't use it, or don't want to? Fuck, I mean Mario Kart DD was marked down on that mindfuck G4 show because the one guy said that it had poor multiplayer. WTF, he thinks that online play is it when it comes to multiplayer.

    Online play in the consoles has not yet reached the level of affordability and ease of use as the PC enjoys, so it's not time yet to be comparing the two in terms of popularity.

    --
    If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
    1. Re:It's not there yet by H3lldr0p · · Score: 2, Insightful
      When did online play become the deciding factor for console games...


      I think I can answer this one.


      It became the deciding factor when the powers that be found out that it was a lot cheaper to let the players make things up for themselves. That's right. Give them a big room with lots of guns and toys to kill each other with and don't worry anymore about the art or the plot for those extra single-player levels that were being made. Wow. Look at that. I just saved X millions of dollars on the project and all I did was tell them to not create anything extra in the game.


      That is when it happened. Reenforcing it was the easy part, especially since the 'tards that review the games were already bought and paid for advertisements that could be counted on.