Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

It’s official. Gaming isn’t just for nerds anymore.

A study in the US claims that now more people play games than don’t, estimating that a staggering 169.9 million people – about 55% of the US population – play games in one form or another.

The report – which lumps PC and non-PC games together but interestingly separates gamers into the seven curiously-titled categories Console, Secondary, Online PC, Avid PC, Offline PC, Heavy Portable and Extreme – defines gamers by their ownership, usage and game-time, and ‘examines the segments relative not only to each other but to the average gamer, independent of segment definition.’ ‘Secondary Gamers’ accounted for the largest group of gamers (some 33.6 million) yet they play for less than four hours a week and tend not to own a console of their own. At the other end of the scale just 4% of those polled – our hardcore ‘Extreme Gamers’ – are thought to dedicate 40+ hours a week to gaming. And in the middle Joe SixPack, Mr. Average himself, owns at least one or two consoles and plays a couple of hours a day, maybe totally twelve hours a week. Interestingly, some 67.3m Americans still use their PC as their platform of choice, with the category ‘Online PC Gamers’ chiefly dominated by females who spend around an hour a day online, whilst their hardcore cousins – the ‘Avid PC Gamers’ – knock up 23 hours a week. Yet 24.1 million PCers still playunconnected to the internet. Apparently, despite the industry’s push to promote online additionality, the average gamer just doesn’t bother.

There’s more if you’re prepared to cough up the cash to pay for a full copy of the NPD Group report, but for those of you more inclined to keep your money for your ‘Extreme’ gaming addiction, you can access the Press Release here. Hit the link and you’ll see that the PR makes a fuss about the increase in female gamers, attributing the 4% rise in numbers of Heavy Portable and Extreme Gamers to the popularity of Nintendo’s Wii and DS and female-friendly titles like the Wii Fit. But since I’m a girl gamer and have been playing long before such consoles hit the market, I’m just going to ignore that, much as I do Animal Crossing and pearly-pink perpherials. So there.

I’ll leave asking if you, like me, heard the term ‘Heavy Portable’ and thought it meant fat people playing Nintendo DSs on the bus. No? Must just be me then …