Some Interesting Statistics

Ever wondered what the actual truth is behind video games? Well here are some interesting facts.

According to OnlineEducation.net :

• 65% of US households play video games.
• 49% of gamers are ages 18-49 and the average gamer is 32 years old. That’s an interesting fact since when it comes to marketing advertisements always seem directed to a more younger crowd. Also whenever there is a crisis that likes to point the finger at video games, such as the Columbine shooting, it always seems to involve teenagers.

The ESRB did their own study and found some more interesting statistics:

• 40% of gamers are indeed females. If you’ve ever been online to the many different gaming websites, such as Gamespot.com, a lot of the users will not be afraid to admit that they don’t believe that girls play video games. Why, when I was on that website for a few years so many of the people told me that they didn’t believe I was a girl since apparently girls don’t play video games….
• The average adult gamer has been playing for 12 years. I’ve been playing for 14 years. It’s not the average, but remember, the average gamer is a 32 year old male and I’m a 21 year old female so I’ve got room to stretch.
• 93% of the time parents are present at the time games are purchased or rented AND 97% of parents report always or sometimes monitoring the games their child plays. So what is the deal with all the parents freaking out about their children playing bad games? How does the old saying go? A few bad apples ruin the bunch.

So there are some great facts about the real world of gaming. Video gaming has some of the most bizarre myths and I hope that this brings light to what some people may think.

Sad news for gamers, playing doesn’t promote cognitive development

It’s recently been discovered that playing video games does not boost cognitive development. In all honesty I did slightly believe that it did. If you’ve grown up playing video games where you have to solve puzzles, crack riddles, and the like wouldn’t it make sense for you to develop that part of your mind more? And when the Nintendo DS was introduced there were games that seemed to help promote brain development such as Brain Age. The Brain Age website reads:

Brain Age’s intuitive gameplay makes brain training easy for everyone. Train across fifteen activities. Solve simple math problems, recite piano songs, play a challenging version of rock, paper, scissors, and test your memory skills in the classic game, Concentration. You’ll love your mental workout!

A study on hand-eye coordination has been conducted on surgeons and the results showed that surgeons who played at least 3 hours a week made 37% less mistakes during surgery and finished it 27% faster. From personal experience I can tell definitely that playing video games has improved my hand-eye coordination. So it would seem that while playing video games might not make you smarter with puzzles, hand-eye coordination does develop somewhat.

A Quick History of Video Games

Computerized gaming roots back to the 1950’s with some simple computer games that were similar to table tennis or shooting airplane targets. In 1977, the Atari was released that would soon take gaming to a whole new level. It was the first console that had plug in cartridges that game in a variety of different video games. The first game to be released was Pong. It was similar to the table tennis game involved in the 50’s.

As time went on gaming branched out into various arcade games such as PAC-MAN, Frogger, and Street Fighter, as well as many others. As technology grew people were able to bring some of these classics into their home through purchasing other consoles. While their have been a great number of consoles created and sold to gamers the most popular are as follows:

• Nintendo Entertainment System (October 1985)
• Sega Genesis (August 1989)
• Sony Playstation (September 1995)
• Sony Playstation 2 (October 2000)
• Nintendo GameCube (November 2001)
• Microsoft Xbox (November 2001)
• Microsoft Xbox 360 (May 2005)
• Sony Playstation 3 (November 2006)
• Nintendo Wii (November 2006)

Here is a weekly overview of video game hardware sales:

So with the constant in gaming technology what will the future offer us? What will be the next console to be released and which of the major gaming companies will release it first? Only time will tell.