For other lovers of game-geek stats (for surely I can’t be alone?), I present for your perusal this fantastic factsheet detailing all there is to know about the swell in popularity of mobile gaming.

Best of all, because all the facts are right there in the image, I don’t even have to type. A bonus considering I’ve just come back from vacation and I’ve sunburned my arms so freaking badly, I can barely type …

Click to see it in it’s full-sized, HD glory!

Source and image credit: GraphJam

France was found to be the country that spent the most money per player, spending an average of £22.3 per month, which is more than the United States, where players spend an average £17.5 each month. The United Kingdom spends £18.6 per player each month while Germany spends £13.9/month.

Paul Breslin, General Manager of PopCap Europe, had this to say:

“What these results tell us is that a one size fits all strategy for Europe doesn’t work as there are quite different platform gaming habits, needs and expectations between France, Germany and the UK. This is clearly a maturing market that has by no means finished evolving. People want to play a range of different games across different platforms. From a publisher’s perspective, this shows the importance of having diversity and multi-platform solutions to reach individual markets in these important regions.”

The survey also provided some additional interesting findings:

In Europe, games are most popular in the age group between 10and 20-years-old, with 87% of 10 – 20-year-olds in in the U.K., 81% in France and 78% in Germany all playing games.

Behind the US, which spends £13.2bn per year on gaming, the biggest gaming economy is Germany (£4bn from 24m payers), followed by the United Kingdom (£3.6bn from 16.1m payers), and France (£2.8bn from 10.4m payers).

U.K. gamers spend 44% of their gaming money (£3.6bn) on console games compared to 11% on casual game sites, 6% on social networks and 10% on mobile games.

European gamers split their time evenly between game consoles, casual game sites, social networks, mobile devices, downloadable games and boxed games, with no one platform attracting more than 50% of play time.

While the number one reason to play most games – casual game sites, social networks, gaming consoles, boxed games, and downloaded games – is to relax and unwind, the main reason European gamers play games on mobile devices is because they’re bored.

The mobile phone is now the primary gaming device of choice, leapfrogging video game consoles and personal computers in less than two years. Smartphone owners are by far the most avid consumers of mobile phone games; significant growth in the mobile games sector is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

More than half of survey respondents said they had played a game on a mobile phone at some time in the past; 73% of U.K. respondents said they had played a mobile phone game at least once, compared to 44% of U.S. residents surveyed.

“Mobile games are, along with social games, the hottest sector of the video game industry by far,” said Dennis Ryan of PopCap, which derives nearly a third of its overall revenues from sales of mobile games like Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies. “As more people purchase smartphones and the entire process of finding, purchasing and playing mobile games becomes as simple as browsing the internet, the mobile games market is going to accelerate even more.”

Among the other survey findings:

* 84% of all mobile phone gamers, and 97% of avid mobile phone gamers say they play games on their phone at least once a week; 92% of smartphone owners who play mobile games say they play at least once a week, and 45% say they play daily.

* When asked which gaming-capable device they play games on most often, 44% of mobile phone gamers chose their phones, compared to video game consoles (21%) and computers (30%).

* Among all mobile phone gamers, 23% of all mobile phone device usage time (excluding phone calls) is spent playing games.

ABCE reports a more specific figure of 5,216,449 unique browsers visited Eurogamer in the period, an increase of 15% from the same period a year earlier. This represents a daily average of 233,949 unique browsers and over 1 million daily page impressions.

Eurogamer’s managing director, Rupert Loman had this to say: “We’ve come a long way since our first ABCE audit in 2005. Despite also expanding into new areas such as events we’ve consistently shown stellar growth on the Eurogamer websites and we’re clearly still the leading site for core gamers across Europe.”

Well, maybe not for much longer. VG247 have reported a surprisingly low-key survey that aims to”understand your level of interest in gaming” and “how [they] can potentially introduce something exciting to your overall gaming experience”. It goes on to politely inquire if British gamers would like a homegrown PAX event.

For those unaware, PAX – the Penny Arcade Expo – has been running since 2004 and unites thousands of gamers with hundreds of games and exhibits, declaring itself as “a gaming festival in the United States for gamers of all genres to come together and celebrate the culture of gaming. Unreleased games, big booths, fabulous prizes, concerts, the gaming community and industry support puts PAX far above any other show on the planet.”

Uh, A FULLY CAPLOCKS REPLY CANNOT PROPERLY CONVEY HOW MUCH I WOULD ATTEND A UK EVENT.

If this news makes you similarly excited, I urge you to hit the link and register your interest. With a bit of luck, the next time we report on PAX, it’ll be to announce the British date!

Source: VG247.com via Eurogamer

With a record-breaking 5.6m copies sold in the opening twenty-four hours after release, it comes as little surprise that with 4.27m illegal downloads on PC – and another 930,000 copies on Xbox 360 – it’s also the most pirated, too. Not good for Activision, given that CoD: Modern Warfare 2 was the most pirated title last year.

It’s not the most pirated game across the Wii and XBox though. That dubious honour goes to Mario and (bizarrely) Dante’s Inferno respectively.

As the TF website states, “PC games are by far the most downloaded titles, with on average more than three times the number of downloads compared to Xbox 360 and Wii releases. Overall, the number of downloads of the top titles in each category grew a little compared to last year.”

Here’s the lowdown in full:

PC Games:
1 Call of Duty: Black Ops (4,270,000)
2 Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (3,960,000)
3 Mafia 2 (3,550,000)
4 Mass Effect 2 (3,240,000)
5 StarCraft II (3,120,000)

Wii Games:
1 Super Mario Galaxy 2 (1,470,000)
2 Wii Party (1,220,000)
3 Donkey Kong Country Returns (920,000)
4 Kirby’s Epic Yarn (880,000)
5 Red Steel 2 (850,000)

Xbox 360 Games:
1 Dante’s Inferno (1,280,000)
2 Alan Wake (1,140,000)
3 Red Dead Redemption (1,060,000)
4 Halo Reach (990,000)
5 Call of Duty: Black Ops (930,000)

Source: Torrentfreak
Via: Joystiq

The researchers tested dozens of 18 to 25 year-olds who were not normally game players. They split the subjects into two groups. One group played 50 hours of the “Call of Duty 2″ and “Unreal Tournament”, the other group played 50 hours of “The Sims 2″.

After the hours where clocked up the participants were subjected to a series of tasks involving making quick decisions based on visual information and separately questions based on sound.

The group playing COD and Unreal where 25% faster and answered correct as many times as those playing The Sims.

“It’s not the case that the action game players are trigger-happy and less accurate: They are just as accurate and also faster,” Bavelier said. “Action game players make more correct decisions per unit time. If you are a surgeon or you are in the middle of a battlefield, that can make all the difference.

With that news, I think I can justify late night COD sessions as brain training ! Just a shame University funding deprived the players of Modern Warfare.

Source: www.rochester.edu

1. Social Networking: Social Networking is increasingly prevalent in children’s lives. Facebook is now the favorite website among tween (8-11) boys and teen (12-15) girls.

2. Key Demographic and “Sweet Spot”: Online games dominate for boys and girls ages 8-11. 91% of teen boys and 93% of teen girls play games online.

3. Nintendo Dominates Handheld Gaming Space: But thanks largely to the iPad and iPhone, Apple is becoming a significant player especially with girls.

4. Portable Platform Discrepancy: Sony’s PSP has largest gender discrepancy. 17% of teen girls play games on the PSP compared to 44% of teen boys.

Source: M2 Research

The key ones I would like to point out are their figures related to girl gamers – which don’t suck BTW !

Forty percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (20 percent).

My favorite view of their study is that the average age of game player is 34 years old, the average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 40 years old. Given averages that means that a lot of those 34 year olds are still being bought games by their parents/Aunts/Uncles etc !

While its impolite to ask your age, if you fall into that bracket do you ask for games for your Birthdays and Christmas ?

Source: ESA

Seeking the view of experts, CEOs and other experts the quote of the article is:

I don’t think we just want games where you dress up Barbies”

Ana Kronschnabl
CEO, Fluffy Logic

The piece provides links to those in the industry who are trying to change things and to at least give options for gameplay.

Take a read, what do you think ?

Source: BBC News