63% of US Population Plays Games
So says an NDP Group Report that from what I can tell isn’t publically available. There’s this brief press release, that’s about it. Ars mentions Nintendo, of course, but without seeing the study it’s hard to know: what are these people playing on? I’m guessing they’re counting PC Solitaire, as they usually do.
I think in the past year the Wii really pushed the “casual” gaming trend into many a previously non-playing household…It would be interesting to see some numbers supporting that assumption though…
Well, the Wii has sold maybe 7 million now? in North America, and given that the US population is 300 million, the Wii might have caused a 1-2% surge in the total number of gamers, but that’s assuming Wii buyers have never played games before. So the larger issue is, as it always is, casual PC gamers playing Solitaire, online games, minesweeper etc. (do they still bundle minesweeper?)