Latest NPD Group report tackles gamer segmentation; PCs played more, PS3 owners are likely 360, Wii owners too
NPD Group’s recent survey manged to investigate the niche segment of the gaming market that is extreme gaming, together with six other segments that the games industry has categorized gamers like us under. Feeling like a can of peaches at your local convenient mart? Well, welcome to new, modernized, cash-driven games industry, folks. Find out where’d you fit in among the 20,000 sampled at the full story.
In a report published by NPD Group, the gaming populace was subdivided into seven general segments where they’d likely belong after careful screening. The document titled “Gamer Segmentation 2008” claimed that we could either be an extreme gamer, an avid PC gamer, a console gamer, an online PC gamer, an offline PC gamer, a young heavy gamer, or a secondary gamer.
Confusing, eh?
Well considering that NPD took into account what gaming platforms their surveyed sample population, plus how long and how often they used those platforms, they’ve got a huge scope of gamers to cover with just any category.
During the course of their investigation, NPD found that the Extreme Gamers consisted of 3% of the surveyed population, which is a great contrast from the 22% that the Young Heavy Gamers they classified.
Despite the fact that Extreme Gamers consists of the smallest population, NPD Group highlighted that just as with the Young Heavy Gamers, Extreme Gamers paid for more than 24 games in a period of just 90 days.
Both segments “over-index” in every gaming platform, though in the US, those platforms are significantly hovering over the highly prized Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s.
For the Young Heavy segment, however, there’s an inclination to play more on PlayStation Portables and Nintendo DSes. The Console segment in the US is the second largest, taking at least 20% of the surveyed population in.
NPD also reported that while the PC is the single most-played platform in the US, the Console, Extreme, and Young Heavy segments favor consoles instead. And on terms of ownership, time and wallet share, the market analyst group says that PlayStation 3 owners are likely to have Xbox 360s and Wiis as well. They have found, however, that only 10% of the PlayStation 2 owners own a PlayStation 3.
Avid PC Gamers are quoted to have been the largest segment to purchase games digitally (27%), though of the entire surveyed population, only 14% of games listed as purchased were acquired online. Extreme and the Avid PC segments have showed that they would love to download an enhancement to their currently owned games.
So in short, the study reveals that PSP and DS gamers are young and heavy. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 gamers are extreme or just simple console, while PC gamers are avid, offline, or online, and a good measure are likely to purchase online as well.
OH WAIT.
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