NPD: online gamers willing to pay

Industry research group finds increasing willingness to cough up more cash for MMO content; PC remains top OL platform.

The NPD Group today released a few findings from its second annual online gaming report, Online Gaming II: The Consumer Perspective. Most of the findings fall under the realm of common sense, but a handful of eyebrows might be raised by some of the discoveries.

First of all, online gaming is becoming more popular. Based on survey responses from 2,000 gamers and members of NPD's online consumer panel, the average time spent playing online has gone up from last year. And while the PC and Mac collectively are the biggest platforms for online gaming (used by 66 percent of respondents, which is down 2 percent from last year), Xbox and PlayStation 2 online gamers numbers are on the rise. The Xbox, in particular, doubled its percentage of players over last year's survey.

The report also found that console gamers are more willing to pay for online gameplay than they were last year, and the amount they'd pay for downloadable content has also increased.

The report also looks into gamer habits, noting that PS2 owners are more likely to play sports games online, while shooters are the games of choice for Xbox owners, and PC or Mac users are turning increasingly toward massively multiplayer online games and away from card, arcade, puzzle, and word games.

By Staff -- GameSpot
Posted Oct 26, 2005 5:52 pm PT