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March 21, 2007
Console gaming a hit with all ages
A new report from Nielsen's market research indicates that console gaming is becoming more popular with, well, just about everyone. They sampled 12,000 television-using households and found that the number of game consoles in those households rose by 18.5 percent in approximately two years. Some other highlights from the report:
- In late 2006, 148.4 million people had access to one or more console gaming systems.
- 77.1% of console gamers are male
- 3 in 4 boys ages 2-11 gamed at some point in the last quarter of 2006 and the average time spent gaming for the boys was 2 1/2 hours per day
- In the 18-34 age group, 16.1 million men and 11.5 million women use console games
- In the over 50 demographic, women outnumber men in the console gaming area
So, how is your library going to gear your resources and services toward these individuals? If most of the young boys are gaming, how do we involve them in that activity at the library? How about the 50+ gamers? What do you have for them?
I always think it's best to ask the users themselves what they want. Do a survey saying the library is going to get into the game business, and ask what we could do to support them in their own interests in this area. See what you find! Start with Jenny Levine's "Gaming and Libraries: Intersection of Services" Library Technology Report. You'll learn quite a bit and more than enough to get you started!
found via ars technica
March 21, 2007 | Permalink
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Comments
Thanks for the comments and post about video games. Video games are important to both public and academic libraries and will continue to grow. The Neilsen data show that gaming happens arcoss genders and generations. 98 million people from the ages of 2-90 played a console game for at least 1 minute during the 4th quarter of 2006. The numbers show that at any given moment there are 1.6 million people playing some type of game.
Jenny's a great resource to start with. Last week she gave a good SirsiDynix online presentation. It's a good overview (similar to her report) but at a cost we can all love (free). Here's the link:
http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2007/03/13/thanks_to_everyone_that_attended_my_sirsidynix_institute_session.html
Paul
Posted by: Paul | March22, 2007
Thanks for the comments and post about video games. Video games are important to both public and academic libraries and will continue to grow. The Neilsen data show that gaming happens arcoss genders and generations. 98 million people from the ages of 2-90 played a console game for at least 1 minute during the 4th quarter of 2006. The numbers show that at any given moment there are 1.6 million people playing some type of game.
Jenny's a great resource to start with. Last week she gave a good SirsiDynix online presentation. It's a good overview (similar to her report) but at a cost we can all love (free). Here's the link:
http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2007/03/13/thanks_to_everyone_that_attended_my_sirsidynix_institute_session.html
Paul
Posted by: Paul | March22, 2007
