SpectatorBytes

It used to be that consumers’ mainstream media habits revolved primarily around listening, watching, reading and communicating. However, the results of recent research indicate that gaming has become a mainstream behavior for digital consumers.

According to Comscore, casual gaming sites attracted 86 million unique visitors in 2008 compared to 67 million in 2007. This is a 27% increase and represents a 50% penetration level of total internet audience. The overall time spent playing online games also increased by 42 percent over the same period. Online game playing now accounts for almost 5 percent of all internet time.

Similarly, the Entertainment Software Association annual survey highlighted the growth in usage:
- 65 percent of households in the US play computers or video games
- The average age of gamers is 35 and 26% of gamers were over the age of 50.
- 40 percent were female. The percentage increases to 44 for online gamers

According to the PC Gaming Alliance, several factors seemed to have helped facilitate the growth in gaming activity:
- Continued increases in broadband penetration have enable digital distribution, thus making games (especially online games) more easily accessible to more consumers
- Expansion of retail presence via game cards at major retailers
- Subscription-based MMOGs have proven a hit with consumers and are highly profitable for producers; this has led to growing consumer acceptance of free games with micro-transaction models around the globe
- Increased popularity and improved performance of low-cost PCs

If current behavior among iPhone users is any indication, mobile devices are likely to make gaming a bigger portion of our time spent consuming media. According to Fierce Mobile Content, games lead all iPhone categories with 6,276 titles, or 23.1 percent of total App Store downloads. Today, 11 out of the top 20 most popular applications for the iPhone or iPod Touch are games.

What makes gaming more interesting as a category for media players is that consumers seem willing to pay. According to the PC Gaming Alliance, revenues for subscription and/or micro-transaction based models were estimated to reach $776 million in the North America/Latin America region. Revenues from games sold via download reached $450 million in the same region. Worlwide revenue figures are much higher given that PC gaming behavior is much more evolved in Asia; they were estimated to reach $11 billion in 2007 for PC games alone.

However, significant growth in activity and revenue estimates in the US indicate that gaming is poised to be one of the major drivers of growth in media over the next few years.

Several major media players have invested or are beginning to invest in games. However, the category is still evolving, particularly around online gaming, so they will likely to need to do more to have any meaningful impact.
Nevertheless, I would not be surprised if several of these players make gaming a core and sizable element of their portfolio in the future…as big as print or video.