Technology
COVID-19 has accelerated dedication to an already flourishing gaming industry
A few days after the release of new June figures, NPD is offering some broader trends for the gaming industry at large. It certainly won't shock you to know that the business is going to flourish in 2020, and COVID-19-driven stay-at - home orders have only added more to gaming growth here in the United States.
Three out of four people in the US play any amount of video games, according to the survey. That's 244 million people-up from 2018 by 32 million. 39 per cent of those who play are light gamers, playing less than five hours a week. Thirty-two per cent are rated as mild, five to fifteen hours, and twenty per cent play more than fifteen hours a week, placing them in the hard group.
The gamers surveyed play about 14 hours a week on average, up from the 12 hours recorded in 2018.
The novel coronavirus has accelerated development as has been indicated by gaming revenues for many months now. Of those surveyed, 35 percent say they play more than they were before the restrictions on pandemics. Although most simply play on non-gaming-specific devices that they already owned — mainly things like smartphones , tablets and computers.
Only 6 percent of respondents say that they have started playing on a new platform. The fairly small number seems to represent some of the troubling economics of the last few months. Few were buying new consoles. In the Switch situation, Nintendo ran into some severe supply problems which saw the console out of stock in several online stores. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Sony are launching new systems before year-end, meaning current systems will be outdated in the not-so-distant future.
