‘Extreme’ Gamers Padding Industry’s Bottom-Line?

I’m sure we all have a certain ‘addiction’ that must be fed… something that forces us to open our wallets from time to time. With me, it’s music, and I usually purchase around ten CDs a month, but the great thing with those is I can usually get new CDs that are overstock for a great price, and even the brand-new releases tend to be priced-right. But even then, I know I’m not ‘extreme’. What if you were extreme though, and knew you were part of the 3% that pads the game industry’s bottom-line?

According to NPD Group’s research, extreme gamers are those who game it up for over 45 hours a week, and purchase a staggering 24 titles every three months! Let’s consider that each game at a minimum is $50… that’s $1,200 every three months, or $4,800 for the year. Sure, I’d consider that extreme, by all accounts.

In total, NPD says there are over 174 million gamers out there, so the 3% make up a mere 5.22 million of that. But how could they actually ‘pad’ an industry? Well, if you do the simple math and take $1,200 and multiply by the 3%, that’d be over $6.264 billion each quarter. If that’s at all accurate, then it’s one incredible statistic.

The NPD report identified seven different segments of gamers, including our extreme friends. The others include 9 percent who are “avid PC gamers,” 17 percent who are console gamers, 14 percent who are online PC gamers, 15 percent who are offline PC gamers, 22 percent who are “young heavy gamers” and 20 percent who are “secondary” gamers.