10% of Online Time Used to Game in US

According to the Online Gaming Global Outlook Q4 2010, US Internet users game for up to 10% of their Internet usage time.

"Because of increasing average Internet speeds and advances in technology, a large number of game genres are now playable online,” said Pietro Macchiarella, Research Analyst, Parks Associates. “With these new online gaming options, people are spending a larger share of their online time playing games. Playing video games currently amounts to ten percent of the time spent online by American consumers.”

I don’t know how ’new’ online gaming is as we have been doing it online for some 15 years. But I understand what me means. It’s far easier now to do so. With broadband speeds and computers, game consoles, handheld gaming devices and smartphones, we’re becoming an almost-always-connected society. That is great for games. We already proved that games are mainstream. Now they consume one-tenth of Internet usage time which really shows their recent growth. Certainly devices like the iPhone and iPad have helped as have operating systems like Android which has a rapidly growing game developing community as well. Couple that all with the rise of social games and you’ve got the makings for a lot of online game time.

The report also breaks down gaming by platform and some of you might be shocked to see that PC gaming is alive and well and tied Game Consoles for the most time at about 5 to 5.5 hours per week.

 Again this is most likely due to those social and casual games where the average gamer is playing on their lunch breaks, after work at home etc. That’s not to discount the online FPS, TPS and RTS fans who are certainly raising that average as they can play several hours in a single night. It seems that even before the Nintendo 3DS launched and long before we see the Xperia Play or NGP, gaming is still portable and fairly popular. That’s most likely due to several versions of the DS and the PSP still being in the market and their updated features kept them mostly relevant.

However, with the next round of portable and mobile gaming platforms it’s quite possible that those old DS and PSP units might fall to the wayside as the manufacturers are now making devices that are far different than the previously incremental changes in the previous versions. How that affects the amount of gaming time remains to be seen but with the convergence of mobile and game platforms I can only see those numbers increasing but not really cutting into the computer/home console usage.