NPD Report 63% of Americans Playing Video Games

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by: Karl Long

According to a new NPD Report video games are becoming and increasingly mainstream activity with a reported 63% of Americans playing video games, and 30% of them playing them more than last year. It’s rather amusing in many ways that “video games” essentially got hijacked by teenaged boys (both figuratively and literally) for the last decade (me being one of them). But with innovations in gameplay like the Wii, social games like Guitar Hero, and Rock Band video games are becoming again, just games, encouraging us to play, and play together.

A few people have been making suggestions for what the trends for 2008 are going to be and I may be biased but I think there is going to be continued innovation around what games can actually be. This includes video games, mobile games, “big games”, and Alternate Reality games. David Armano has stated he thinks 2008 is going to be the year of mobile media and I agree, and I think that includes games and how we consume and interact with social media (which of course I think are kind of like games).

Also check out Greg Verdino’s trends of 2007.

Original Post: http://experiencecurve.com/archives/npd-report-63-of-americans-playing-video-games