Said NPD analyst Anita Frazier, "Despite the buzz in the industry regarding online gaming, it is still relatively small compared to offline gaming. There is still a large, untapped market for gaming in general and online gaming in particular."

It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you consider online gaming to be unimportant, then you will either not address it or halfass it, which will cause people to avoid it, which leads you to believe that it is unimportant. If Nintendo started offering anything close to what Microsoft offers with the 360, those online numbers could double in a year.

kingofallcosmos

72% play games. But not necessarily 72% are gamers. I know some peopel that play Games, condemn games in the same sentence... =/

@Heinrad: They're relying on the fact that gamers are too lazy too vote. =/ I missed the California Primaries

ph15h

I'm guessing that "some sort of video games" includes Bejewled or the like on cell phones and things installed with windows. Even my mom plays flash based casual games, but aside from my inner circle of friends, I dont know hardly anybody who really games.

moonbunnychan

This is interesting (for politians);

1) As has been said, these 72% of your population are training on 'murder dimulators', and

2) In every election speech you give condemning video games, you are alienating around 72% of the population again.

Do you think their tact will change now? Somehow I doubt it.

Heinrad

Yeah I don't know what I typed really.I was looking at some numbers here and that last bit didnt' really make much sense. Anyways,I think there are a lot of multi console users.

enewtabie

Nice. I guess at this point it's just a matter of removing the stigma and letting people freely talk about it without fear of sounding nerdy.

fuchikoma

@ph15h:
Yeah I agree.Hell,there are plenty of both consoles sitting in the homes/offices of both company employees.I leave Nintendo out,but those guys too I'm sure.

enewtabie

only 2-3? wth... Kotaku. You better post those Poll Results that we did. I think Kotaku alone has to be atleast 10% of the gaming population and most of us own multiple consoles.

ph15h

Playing a Flash-based BreakOut clone once in 2007 qualifies you as an online PC gamer.

emag

Well at least I'm a part of the 2-3% category.

enewtabie

huh.... I always kinda wondered when Hands Across America happened.... interesting....

Oh, and does that mean that 72% of Americans commit crimes..... other than illegally downloading music? When's Freecell going to get blamed for card haphazardly acts? Or Minesweeper about being a bomb planter simulator?

NoFunShogun

@Iceking5:
lmao either that or Minesweeper

IntelSilver

Dear god think of how many murderers that is! Someone alert the First Amendment Lawyer!

liquid_kore

Cool. Now do Canada!

IntelSilver

72%?!? jesus satan that's a lot of people!

frank0127

Wow, now that's quite shocking. Thanks for the neat little factoid. =D

HaydenTenno

This probably includes solitaire...

Iceking5

So that means there are roughly 218 million gamers in America. If you look at the stats posted on Jan 18: [kotaku.com] , you see that the totals for all consoles currently on the market is roughly 125 million. I guess there's a lot of PC and retro gamers out there...

greatslack

I've had an NES and a SNES and a 360, does that count as having 3 consoles?

I'm really interested in the method used, because i personally feel this is too high of a number, and their conclusions are quite vague.

TheHun

33 % of my household plays video games. I guess we're significantly below average.

Strange Bedfellows

Remember when Johnny 5 was in Hands Across America?

That was awesome.

TickleMeElmo

72% is a lot. Kind of gives me that "united" feeling. Unfortunately, it's very similar to the feeling I get with my fellow potsmokers, which is, wow, all these people like this and yet we won't band together and make a change. I guess we're just sitting around stoned playing COD4.

dingwall1

hahahahaha you cannot stop us politicians. in your faceeeee hahahahahaaha

PHILOSOPHER541

2-3% of console owners own multiple consoles? Really? I swore multi-console was going to be the norm, rather than the exception this generation or at least 30%. Are we simply looking at numbers representing a bunch of last-gen owners? Tons of people still owning a PS2 and nothing else?

misterthou

@jallen:

multiple answers for the question, since people tend to play more than one platform.

dozerking

@jallen:

It was most likely a checkbox with 3 options, and 90% selected the pc, 19% selected console, and 3% cited cell phones when you add it all up. You can't really have a 100% pie chart because many people play on more than one platform.

dozerking

So, uh, 90% of online players cite the PC as their platform of choice.

'Kay.

19% cite consoles as their online platform of choice.

3% cite cell phones.

Now, I wasn't a math major, but I'm pretty sure that's adding up to something like 112%. I'd like to know how that question was phrased. Was it a "check all that apply to you" kind of thing, and 90% of respondents had the PC box checked, while only 19% checked a console box?

jallen

@TheHun: nvm they mean next gen consoles silly me, but still, is this just some survey?

Q1, Have you ever played a video game? Y/N

then they draw the conclusion that 74% plays (as in on a regular basis)

I could see that happening

TheHun

@RogerWilco:
yeah, 38% of the us population playing online games on the PC (especially compared to the fact that it was 42% overall) is really impressive.
so, that means 5% of online total is 360?
also, how much of this is MMO's?

roflwaffles

Wait... so 42% of the population games online and 90% of that is on the PC? So at least 38% of the population games on their PC?

Sweet! Long Live PC Gaming!

RogerWilco

@frank0127: ITS OVER 9000!!!!!

D Mitsuki

72% play Xbox360
*Fixed

nypad5

But guys, PC gaming is dead.

=p

ehlaren

Is it just me or did anyone else expect the 360 to have more of an online presence?
Assuming that the Wii accounts for (maybe) two percent of the online console count, then doesn't that mean PSN has almost caught up with Live?

KypFox

It's like my wife...she never touches my PS3 and says she "doesn't play videogames" yet she spends every evening with the TV on and her laptop in her lap playing some popcap game.

Gort23

@ehlaren:

Indeed.

Still, it's heartening to see that the PC still utterly dominates online gaming. Sure, it's on consoles, but now we know it's not nearly as big there.

Pantsman

If the 2-3% multi-console owners holds true to GTA4-buying population, then the exclusive DLC thing really isn't an issue, as most people don't even have a choice of which one to get.

kftgr

So, 72% of the U.S. plays games because 3000 or whatever responded to the survey..dumb.

ktseymour

72%? Sure wouldn't seem like that after watching ten minutes of Fox News.

TOWER_JUNKIE

This just in... 72% of Americans spend time in rape and murder simulators.

That's what videogames are, right?

r1nce

That's an interesting tidbit of information.

KM91

72 percent?!! That must include non gamers who play spider solitare and minesweeper when they oughta be working. Even still, that's a mental number!

kplooksafterme

sweet jesus, according to UK's papers; we're all proper fucked

mabman