Free and mobile gamers outnumber all other segments - NPD
Despite lack of growth, core console players still outspend their social and mobile counterparts
The industry tracking NPD Group today released some highlights from its 2013 Gamer Segmentation report, among them a look at which corners of the industry are seeing player growth.
One of those groups, the one the NPD calls "free & mobile gamers," also happens to be the largest. In an online survey of 8,831 individuals, the NPD Group found that 29 percent of respondents would be classified as free & mobile gamers, up 2 percent year-over-year.
The only other group to see growth was the "avid omnigamer," defined as frequent players on multiple systems who list consoles or PCs as their platform of choice. This segment represented 16 percent of the industry in the NPD's survey. The other gamer segments--casual, core, family, and social--all saw their ranks decrease year-over-year.
Despite its shrinking slice of the pie (only 10 percent this year), the core console gamer segment is clearly still crucial to the industry. They are spending more money on their games than any of the other segments, and reported playing on an average of five different platforms. (The Xbox 360 was the most commonly played system among the core crowd.) On top of that, core console players were most likely to use their game systems for non-gaming purposes like streaming movies.