Nearly half of adults are video gamers, study suggests
Last Updated: Monday, October 29, 2007 | 5:14 PM ET
CBC News
Video games aren't just for kids anymore, as a survey by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada suggests.
Forty-six per cent of adults played a video game during a four-week period, says the survey of 500 adults and 203 children conducted in June by Ipsos-Reid for the Toronto-based association.
Nintendo's senior managing director, Shigeru Miyamoto, demonstrates the Nintendo Wii's motion-sensing controller. Nintendo's console has been a big hit for the company.
(Associated Press)
The 2007 demographics and usage report also indicates the average age of gamers is 39.
Only one-quarter of games were played on consoles such as the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3, with two-thirds played on computers. The remainder of games were played on handheld gaming systems, cellphones and personal data assistants.
Four out of every 10 households own a console or handheld system, the ESAC said. About 82 per cent of all Canadian adults have played a video game at least once, and 58 per cent of gamers are male.
The study also looked at how closely parents watched what their children were playing, with nearly 80 per cent saying they monitored the games.
About 21 per cent said they were not too careful in monitoring, or did not watch the games at all. More than 80 per cent of Canadians surveyed said they supported the Entertainment Software Rating Board ratings attached to games.
Sales of entertainment software and hardware rose by 18.1 per cent to more than $23 million in 2006, the ESAC reported. The top-selling console game up to July was Play for the Nintendo Wii, followed by Pokemon Diamond Version for the Nintendo DS and the Value Pack for the Xbox. The top-selling PC games were World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and MS Age of Empires III. Sales this year are expected to grow by 21 per cent.
Canada is a hot spot for video game development, the organization said.
Canadian-based developers and publishers are responsible for about one-fifth of the top-selling games in North America, and bring in estimated revenue between $1.5 billion and $2 billion.
During phone interviews of 500 adults and 2003 children conducted from June 15 to June 23, they were asked whether they had played a video over the previous four weeks.
