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PC Games (Games) PlayStation (Games) XBox (Games)

Online Gaming Habits Surveyed 35

Posted by simoniker from the person-versus-person dept.
Thanks to Business Wire/TMCNet for its press release summarizing the details of a new NPD survey about online gaming. It's noted that "the overwhelming majority of today's 13-to-44-year-old gamers have the ability to play games online and a good portion are taking advantage of it, but it's dominated by one platform - the PC." Other statistics include online console demographics ("PlayStation 2 and Xbox skew heavily male, with approximately 88 percent being male and 12 percent being female") and the mobile gaming market ("Roughly 10 percent of those who said they play online are strictly mobile-based gamers and do not use any of the three online-capable systems.")
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Online Gaming Habits Surveyed More

Online Gaming Habits Surveyed

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  • emailing the survey (Score:5, Insightful)

    by adamshelley ( 441935 ) <adamshelley@shaw.ca> on Monday August 16, 2004 @07:58PM (#9986364) Homepage Journal
    chances are if you are emailing the survey the person has a PC and has gamed on it online.

    this is a flawed approach.

    u need to find people without a pc (no email) and find out if they play online with a console.

    no wonder PC won.

    • u need to find people without a pc (no email) and find out if they play online with a console.

      But how many people have an internet connection (most likely broadband for XBox Live! or PS2s online games), but no PC?

    • Re:emailing the survey (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )
      I hate to break it to you but pc would have won anyways.

      and quite realistically, everyone who plays xbox or ps2 games online has an email account, if you really went looking for people that didn't have one _that_ would be making a skewed survey. hell, even people without any of the devices have email - in the modern world. hell, a lot of the people playing online games on the net with pc's aren't even playing with their own computers but rather play at cybercafes, schools and so on - and that counts as wel
    • 90% of the respondants who play games had an online capable system - including PC/Mac. Thus at least 10% of the respondants who do play video games do not have a PC.

      I assume they replied to the email from work/school?

      Anyhow, you are absolutly right that doing an online survey about online gaming is going to skew the results. Immediately you are eliminating anyone who doesn't have email, or who check their email very infrequently (although the survey lasted 18 days).

      I'm sure it is far cheaper to survey
  • The interesting thing is the categories -- that "mobile gamer" (cellphone gaming) is now prevalent enough to be a category is news.

    Not really news that all the geeky gadget/console-gamers are men though.

    I wonder where they got their list of survey candidates as well... the article does mention that there was an "over-sampling of males".

  • In other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3&gmail,com> on Monday August 16, 2004 @08:17PM (#9986473) Journal
    Scientists have discovered that water is wet. More on this as it develops.

    Rob

  • Online gaming huh.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @08:22PM (#9986503) Journal
    Does this mean 1 time online? 2,3,4 or what?

    I used to play FPS games (Half-life mods) and Diablo 2 online alot, but in the last 6 months I've lost the urge to play any more. Does this mean I'm an online gamer or not?

    I play my GBA more then anything these days (pokemon is to blame..), but I have played online. Do I get stuck with the "played online" group, or with the "I dont" group?

    I'm neither yes or no, I'm more "meh"
  • I think it is a joke that people using xbox live and console based online games must pay such high fees for using such facilities. Not only do people have to pay for broadband which is expensive enough (at least in Australia), but also to pay the ridiculous fees which line the pocket of fatcat businessmen. At least with PC online games generally it is free to play. I know one thing i'm not asking Santa for this year. Also haven't we learned that connecting anything made from microsoft to the internet is

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MagicDude ( 727944 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @10:19PM (#9987217)
    PlayStation 2 and Xbox skew heavily male, with approximately 88 percent being male and 12 percent being female

    In other news, a study shows that 12% of video game players are habitual liars.

  • It's not there yet (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sqrt(2) ( 786011 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @10:39PM (#9987359) Journal
    I'm sick of watching or reading reviews for games and seeing that they took a big hit in the score for not having online play. When did online play become the deciding factor for console games, when the majority of console owners either can't use it, or don't want to? Fuck, I mean Mario Kart DD was marked down on that mindfuck G4 show because the one guy said that it had poor multiplayer. WTF, he thinks that online play is it when it comes to multiplayer.

    Online play in the consoles has not yet reached the level of affordability and ease of use as the PC enjoys, so it's not time yet to be comparing the two in terms of popularity.

    • Re:It's not there yet (Score:3, Insightful)

      by H3lldr0p ( 40304 )
      When did online play become the deciding factor for console games...

      I think I can answer this one.

      It became the deciding factor when the powers that be found out that it was a lot cheaper to let the players make things up for themselves. That's right. Give them a big room with lots of guns and toys to kill each other with and don't worry anymore about the art or the plot for those extra single-player levels that were being made. Wow. Look at that. I just saved X millions of dollars on the project and all

  • On the most dominant console, Sony charges $40 for an online adapter. Do they realize that if the price of the console drops to $99, then the adapter is almost half the console. Imagine buying a PC with a network adapter valuing at 40% of the cost?! No wonder online gaming still hasn't moved.

  • Rerun the survey, or better still just ask EA, for thier stats.
  • i am not understanding why more people aren't into online console gaming. most of the games have built-in voice options and you don't have to worry about upgrading and setting up video cards and voice servers and ram requirements. you just turn the game on and go.

    xbox live is a wonderful service. although, i would have to say you do get quite a lot of dregs when you play with strangers. make a friends list and keep them close.

    ps2 ... i have only played ffxi [seriousfix.com] with this and i have been loving it (i prefe
  • The average online game time played was 6.1 hours per week, but the average offline time was 5 - thus totalling 11.1 hours per week.

    I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the average is that high - I would like to know the median (and the standard deviation of the mean...) because I imagine a few young people playing huge hours drive up the average significantly (don't forget, the survay was done in June when many young students are on summer vacation and thus have more time to devote to gaming).

    Actually,
    • I love how 10% of the respondants in a sample set of less then 20,000 (which just *might* be considered a big enough sample size for one decently popular game) were responding on a machine that wasn't even capable of going online in terms of gameplay.
  • because of the simple reason that their purposely being limited by their manufacturers in order to achieve consumer lock in & price fixing to profit from. (Thus forcing everyone to buy only so & so's branded cr@p at whatever prices they choose to initially set...)

    Since Pc's don't have only one manufacturer making part XYZ, there's more competitiveness in cost & features. Both of which practically guarantee's their dominance. Why?

    Because this allows for a lot more configurability for user choi

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