PC The #1 Choice For Kids Gaming

An NPD study entitled 'Kids and Gaming' has revealed that for the latest generation of gamers, games on the PC is their first taste of the hobby. Interestingly, kids seem to go through a sort of 'gaming life cycle', starting with kid-oriented systems (Leapster), with PC games picking up around six and console gaming beginning around ten. The study also confirmed something you probably already knew: more kids are gaming than ever before. "The study, which surveyed kids aged two to 17, said that more than one-third of children in the US are spending more time playing games than a year ago. Half of these kid gamers are 'light' users at five hours a week or less and the other half are 'medium, heavy or super users' who game six to 16 hours-plus per week. With the kids surveyed who play games online, an average of 39 percent of their time is spent playing games online versus offline. The majority of the kids (91 percent) play free online games."

Possible explanations

[RogueyWon]

I think there are two factors at play here. The first, and most obvious, is that edutainment games are overwhelmingly based on the PS (although the PSP and DS both have a growing library). Most parents like to feel that their children are at least getting some educational value out of the games they play and edutainment games are often how they decide to introduce their children to the world of IT.

The other, more complicated argument, probably revolves around pester-power. Almost all middle-class house-holds in the US/UK today contain a PC. These are generally low-end machines bought off-the-peg from a high-street store for a mix of home-office use and recreational web-browsing/e-mail. Consoles, despite having firmly entered the mainstream, remain less common, mainly because they are single-purpose machines and not everybody likes games.

When children are still in the single-digit age-range, they're generally more likely to be satisfied with the fairly basic games you can play on a low-end PC. However, as they age, they and their peers become increasingly aware of what else is available in gaming terms and more aware of what they don't have. At this point, they also get better at pestering their parents and more likely to be able to make the case for big-ticket items such as games consoles finding their way onto Christmas lists and the like.

Mind you, when I was 10-12ish, I was playing Gunship 2000, Eye of the Beholder, Microsoft Flight Simulator and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe on the PC. Frankly, I'm not sure I'd have the time or patience for the learning curve that games such as this involved today. Maybe some kids just develop... ah... sophisticated tastes early.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The more kids that are gaming, the more legitimate an entertainment medium gaming will be in the future. As with other mediums before it.

So long, of course, as the parents are monitoring their kids. I do; do you?

Not suprising

[nrich239]

This story is not surprising for those of us still "growing up" (I'm a recent college grad) I started out with console gaming (NES) and moved to PC for some time while waiting to get enough money to buy the next console. And with parents buying things like LeapFrog, the next gen is starting even younger. I can't imagine how to get much more gaming time in than I already do (~4 hrs a night after work and countless on weekends)

Idea for follow up story: "5yr old develops youngest case of carpal tunnel...."

No kidding

[eln]

For ages 5 to 7, the PC is the only place you're going to get games. At that age, you're primarily looking for educational slower-paced games. While most games of that type on the PC are insufferably lame, that category of game is basically non-existent on consoles. Add to that the fact that parents of kids that age tend to have less money than they do when the kids are older (since people tend to both make more and get better at managing money as they age), and the fact that most people already own a computer even before they have kids, and it's easy to see why kids would be gaming on the family PC prior to any console.

You wouldn't know it from the game stores ...

[PhxBlue]

An NPD study entitled 'Kids and Gaming' has revealed that for the latest generation of gamers, games on the PC is their first taste of the hobby.

And yet, to call the PC games sections of stores like GameStop and EBGames "anemic" is an understatement. What gives?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Develop for the PC.

[MaWeiTao]

To be honest, I've always believed if Nintendo and others truly wanted to appeal to casual gamers they'd be developing games for the PC. Perhaps not so much in Japan, but certainly elsewhere in Asia, the US and Europe.

PCs are so pervasive that it makes the barrier of entry into gaming quite low. I've known countless people with no interest in gaming whatsoever by intrigued by some game they've found online. The important thing is to make system requirements anywhere as demanding as they are for most mainstream PC games. It sure would be nice if Nintendo produced a USB version of the Wii controller.

Two things

[mdarksbane]

1) PC's are more ubiquitous than consoles. A family with no older children is likely to not have a console for themselves, but will have a PC (note that this likely won't be a proper "gaming" PC, but edutainment games generally don't take much to run).

2) PC's are still easier to develop for. Every programmer has experience on them, the SDK's are generally free or at least relatively cheap, and your test hardware can be anything from your own dev machine to the old dell your girlfriend used to use. Edutainment games are a relatively low budget business - the cost for the console SDK's is designed largely around keeping low-budget and hobbyist programmers away from them.

Combine those two, and you've got a PC-based gaming market for small children.