A recent study from The Nielsen Company has highlighted that the video game category has actually benefitted from the global recession, with gamers engaging with the medium more than ever.
The study titled ‘The Value Gamer: Play and Purchase in a Recession’ has demonstrated that over the past several months, the category has seen a trend where consumers are playing games more often and for greater periods of time.
This increase in engagement is reasoned to the fact that gamers are looking for more value out of their games and want to stretch their entertainment dollar further than before. This has in turn increased gameplay and longevity in the market.
Michael Flamberg, director of client consulting at Nielsen Games, commented that casual games are helping push this increase in usage.
“Primarily, we believe mainstream gamers are playing more of the broadly appealing games like Wii Fit, Guitar Hero and Rock band and pushing their hours of gameplay up,” he said.
“The social aspects of these games have engaged them. We don’t believe hardcore gamers are driving up the usage averages we have observed.”
Whilst many companies are going under and people are spending less it seems that video games are one of the key categories that is really avoiding the ramifications of the recession, and in some ways it is actually better off.