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Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Gaming Overtaking Television And Movies?

I doubt it, but this is interesting:

A substantial minority of American adults would rather spend their free time playing casual games -- such online diversions as "Bejeweled" and "TextTwist" -- than watch television.

A study by Harris Interactive set for release Monday found that 31 percent of the over-18 set preferred the games to TV for whiling away a spare hour. Watching movies at home fared better, with 21 percent choosing games instead, but going to the movie theater did slightly worse with 35 percent.

RealNetworks commissioned the study to understand its customers better, company senior vice president worldwide games Michael Schutzler said. He added that they were very surprised by some of the findings, particularly when the report broke out the numbers for women older than 40.

Nearly half (49 percent) would play casual games rather than go to the movie theater, 32 percent opted for them over movies at home, and 37 percent chose them over watching TV.
-- Casual gaming taking places of daily activities


I probably spend more hours with television than gaming, but it's close. I'd say the three kinds of media are split about evenly for myself. With television shows arriving to the 360 and Blu-Ray around the corner, one has to wonder just how much these activities are going to start converging. Suddenly playing Halo during the SuperBowl doesn't sound so geeky-weird anymore.


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1 comment:

Clamatius said...

For me, games > tv > movies in terms of time spent. Not that I'm doing a whole lot of any of them right now, sadly.

I've noticed a lot of the "older generation" (50+) that I know definitely play a lot of casual games (e.g. the Freecell/Solitaire type stuff) but do not consider themselves gamers.