We've already covered the
BBC's summary report of their
investigation into UK gamers. Now a full report has been released which goes into much more depth, revealing more about
gaming as a national hobby on this side of the pond.One of the trends observable from the report is UK gamers' platform of choice--every age group surveyed featured the PS2 and PC prominently as the top two gaming platforms, though the ordering differed across the generations. Mobile gaming also featured very heavily, possibly because the survey labelled those who played Snake on their phone occasionally as much a "gamer" as nightly Halo 2 addicts.
Other interesting data comes from the proportion of female gamers in each category. While male gamers outnumber females in every age group, the ratio ranges from 44:56 to 48:52--this seems counter-intuitively high, despite attempts by various groups to make the female gamer more prominent as a consumer. From the report:
"Female gamers display a stronger attraction to certain genres and are searching for their gaming choices across a wider number of platforms, which may indicate a lack of appealing material on the popular consoles"
These statistics alone aren't overwhelmingly meaningful, but if commissioned at regular intervals, we could map out the state of the "gaming nation" over time very easily. The report shows a lot of promise for gaming as a mainstream hobby in the UK, but with 41% of the British population seemingly not gamers, the industry still has to work for its custom.
