During a recession, it’s not uncommon to see an increase in the amount of time and money spent on various forms of entertainment. It should come as little surprise, then, that a new study by the Nielsen Company shows the number of hours gamers play is at an all time high.
The Value Gamer: Play and Purchase Behavior in a Recession study shows that gamers have increased their purchases of used games to “record-breaking totals” since the survey began asking about used games in 2006. Mail-order video game rental services have also increased. The study finds that “the recession has not abated the trend of increasing gameplay and may have in fact accelerated it as gamers look to get more value out of the games they own.”
“Primarily, we believe mainstream gamers are playing more of the broadly appealing games (i.e Wii Fit, Guitar Hero and Rock Band) pushing their hours of gameplay up,” said Michael Flamberg, director of client consulting, Nielsen Games. “The social aspects of these games have engaged them. We don’t believe hardcore gamers are driving up the usage averages we’ve observed. Second, gamers may be looking to stretch their entertainment dollar further through playing games they own more. The importance of value for them is evident in the findings on used game purchase.”
Beyond used games and rented games, new game sales are actually soft compared to last year. The study finds that this is in part because of unfavorable title comparisons in terms of how popular the releases have been this spring vs. last spring. Essentially, last year had bigger hits than this year.