More than half of all adults in the United Kingdom, France and Germany play games, the National Gamers Surveys suggests, with the UK holding the highest ratio of gamers in Europe, with 68pc of men and 59pc of women.
In Germany, 63pc of men and 54pc of women play games, while in France, 61pc of men and 52pc of women play games. That’s an estimated total of 153,133,640 gamers in these three regions alone.
More than 153m men and women are estimated to play games via consoles, casual game sites, social networks and mobile devices, revealed the survey, conducted by Newzoo.
The results also revealed there is no one dominant gaming platform in Europe, with gamers splitting their time between all types of devices – but spending more money on console games.
Money spent on games
However, while there are more gamers that spend more in total in the UK and Germany, it’s the French that spend the most money per player, spending an average of stg£22.3 per month, which is more than the US, where players spend an average stg£17.5 each month. The UK spends stg£18.6 per player each month while Germany spends stg£13.9 per month.
“What these results tell us is that a one-size-fits-all strategy for Europe doesn’t work as there are quite different platform gaming habits, needs and expectations between France, Germany and the UK,” said Paul Breslin, general manager of PopCap Europe.
“This is clearly a maturing market that has by no means finished evolving. People want to play a range of different games across different platforms. From a publisher’s perspective, this shows the importance of having diversity and multi-platform solutions to reach individual markets in these important regions.”
While the No 1 reason to play most games – on casual game sites, social networks and gaming consoles, and via boxed games and downloaded games – is to relax and unwind, the main reason European gamers play games on mobile devices is because they’re bored.
