Nearly 2.5X more gamers since 2008. Gaming industry changing, sees large influx A new study has found that the number of gamers in the US has grown from 56 million in 2008 to 135 million in 2011.
The 241 percent increase is thanks largely to the explosion of new online and mobile gaming platforms, including those on social networks and smartphones. Parks Associates performed the study, which is called Trends in Digital Gaming: Free-to-Play, Social, and Mobile Games. The report considers a gamer as such if he or she spends at least one hour a month playing a video game, whether it's on a home console, smartphone or as part of a social network such as Facebook. Those who downloaded a game on a phone has also risen from seven percent to 17.
Study: 135 Million Americans Play Digital Games. Games developers select smartphones as most popular platform. The iPhone and other smartphones became the most popular gaming platform for developers for the first time this year, according to a study by the industry trade body Tiga published on Thursday.
British developers are increasingly choosing to release their games as apps on smartphones and Facebook, rather than traditional players such as the PC or games consoles. Almost half of UK developers now produce games for mobile devices and social networks – with two-thirds opting for Apple's iPhone – according to the survey of 104 businesses by Tiga. The shift to a new generation of mobile phones and websites comes as gamers have flocked to Facebook for titles such as Farmville and Cityville, and Angry Birds has dominated the market on smartphones. Study: Older women don't just dig social games, but mobile games, too. Everybody knows that the average player of Facebook games is a middle-aged mother, but could moms be down with mobile games, too?
A new study by mobile game network MocoSpace found that 27 percent of women aged 30 and older spend more than three hours daily playing games on their mobile devices, while 30 percent spend one to two hours playing. However, only 18 percent of men in the same age group spend three hours daily playing the games, while 33 percent play for one or two.