MMOs Account for 15% of All Time Spent Playing Games in U.S. and Europe, finds Report

The massively multiplayer online (MMO) genre has really grown in recent years, no doubt fueled in part by the success and mainstream attention World of Warcraft has generated. A new survey from Gamesindustry.com, Today’s Gamers MMO Focus Report, indicates that MMOs are actually responsible for about 15% of all the time spent playing games in both the U.S. and Europe. 

In the U.S. specifically, 14% of all time spent on video games is dedicated to MMOs, with an average of 5.5 hours a week per player compared to 4.9 hours for console players and 4.8 for casual game portal players. In Europe, it varies from country to country - MMOs account for just 8% in the U.K. but 16% in Belgium, 13% in Germany, and 15% in France and in the Netherlands.  In the European countries surveyed around 10% of the online population plays MMOs, and in the U.S. this figure jumps all the way to 21%. 

The survey, which involved over 13,000 respondents aged eight years and older, also found that about two-thirds of all MMO players are male. In the U.S. the biggest age group was found to be 8-12 year olds, "which can be explained by the popularity of virtual worlds aimed at young children, such as Club Penguin and Disney Toontown," the report said. In France and Germany people aged 13-19 make up the largest MMO playing group (over 50%), and in The Netherlands, the U.K. and Belgium, MMO players are even older on average. 

Importantly, in terms of spending habits, the report noted that between 35- 40% of MMO players in all European countries indicate they paid for playing MMOs, and this was "somewhat higher" in the U.S.  Friends were also found to be "by far the most important source of information on MMOs, beating all other media channels such as news sites, blogs, print magazines and TV." 

“The days we could categorize gamers on the basis of a single game platform are long gone. Of the U.S. console players 29% also plays MMOs and 25% on their mobile phone. Also typical for today’s gamers is the fact that more than half of U.S. console gamers (55%) also plays on casual game portals. All these platforms are increasingly competing for time and money of the same consumer,” commented Peter Warman, MD of Gamesindustry.com.

The full report is available for purchase here for the price of 4,950 euros.