Compared to dropping $10 or more on a movie ticket, Americans are finding it more suitable to curl up with a good video game.
Research from The NPD Group found that 63 percent of Americans have played a video game in the last six months, while 53 percent have gone to the movie theater. The study was based on more than 11,000 responses from U.S. consumers.
Before jumping to the conclusion that video games are more popular than movies, consider the glaring omission of statistics on watching movies at home. Surely, the percentage of Americans who have watched a movie on DVD, through VOD or just over the television is much higher than either of the other two percentages for gaming and movie theater visits.
There's also the question of what kind of games people are playing. Technically, a 10-minute flash game played over the Web would count the same on this survey as a 20-hour console game, so it's not necessarily fair to say people are choosing video games over movies because of value (though video game industry executives will argue that point, for sure).
In general, though, NPD's statistics illustrate the popularity of video games. Of the group that played video games in the last six months, 31 percent purchased a console, up 7 percent from the year before. The NPD Group also learned that gamers are finding new ways to play. Of the gamer group, 10 percent played on a social network and 5 percent paid to download a video game from the Web, up 2 percent from last year.
Perhaps most interesting is a statistic revealed in a quote from NPD analyst Anita Frazier. “Video games account for one-third of the average monthly consumer spending in the U.S. for core entertainment content, including music, video, games,” she said. “While a portion of that share stems from the premium price of console games, we’re also seeing an overall increase in the number of people participating in gaming year-over-year.”
