Pew Report (part two)
Chris Karalus had an excellent find in reference to the
Pew Report post I made about a week ago. Here's what he wrote:
I would question the validity of the entire survey given that in 2006 they reported that 60% of people never played games and then in 2007 (the survey is from 2007) only 4% said never.He guided me to question 38 of the survey, which you can find on
this page:
Q38 How often do you play games, whether on a computer… or online… or on a game console… or on some other device? Do you do this…?Here are the responses for 2007:
21% Everyday or almost everyday28% A few times a week27% A few times a month20% Less often4% Never* Don't know/refused
On the other side of the column, though, they list the responses to the same question for the survey period February-April 2006. And Kevin is right--the "Never" category is 60%!
Based on that, it certainly does seem fair to question whether any of that data is particularly useful, given that the change in that one category seems incredibly suspect.
Sooner Than Expected
I've written for years that the hysteria over videogames, carefully nurtured by politicians for personal gain, would be ending in the future.
By "future," though, I thought ten years. Maybe fifteen. As it turns out, I think I overshot the mark.
Kevin Gaughan sent me a link to the Pew report
Adults and Video Games. Okay, he sent it to me nine months ago, but I kept it in my inbox.
A few bullet points, although I'll be using hyphens instead of bullets:
--"53% of American adults age 18 and older play video games, and about one in five adults (21%) play everyday or almost everyday."
--"97% of teens play video games."
--"57% of respondents with at least some college education play games, significantly more than high school graduates (51%) and those who have less than a high school education(40%)."
Demographics (defined by the report as "the percentage of Americans in each demographic category who report playing games online or offline, using a computer, cell phone or any other kind of gaming device"):
Ages 19-29: 81%
30-49: 60%
50-64: 40%
65+: 23%
That breaks down pretty neatly, for now. It basically goes from 100% of teenagers to 20% for over 65s in twenty-point increments.
However, and this is a big however, there are a significant number of people over fifty who have never been exposed to video games. That's even more true for the 65+ category.
I think it's likely that once "exposure saturation" works it way through the demographic groups, the 50-64 category will be over 50%.
In other words, gaming is reaching critical mass in terms of being a potential voter bloc. It can be argued that it's reached that point already.
I'm not saying that people who play games lack the ability to be outraged over games. In certain circumstances, we all can. What I can say, though, is that people who already play games are far less likely to believe some of the unadulterated bullshit that people like Jack Thompson spew.
In other words, a fear-based environment when it comes to videogames is dead. Profiteering from such an environment will soon be dead as well, because if politicians look at anything, it's demographics. It's no longer going to be possible to cut us away from the herd. We
are the herd.
That's both comforting and disturbing at the same time. I'll put that down as a topic for another day.
And yes, we're in the Stanley Cup Finals. Hell, yes.
Used Games (Associated Notes)
We haven't talked about game rentals yet, but in terms of Xbox One games, they're finished.
Gamefly? Done. They'll push the previous generation for as along as they can, and offer Wii U games, but the fuse has been lit.
And if you're getting all excited about the PS4 and renting games, or thinking they're different from Microsoft, you might want to wait until Sony announces specifics, because they're being even more vague than Microsoft. I don't expect Sony's details to be substantially more consumer-friendly than Microsoft.
If they are, it will make the decision to purchase an easy one.
Here's what I see that I don't like. The PS2 was inexpensive and accessible to everyone, and Sony made a fortune. The Wii was inexpensive and accessible to everyone, and Nintendo made a fortune.
Does being inexpensive and accessible guarantee success? Of course not. It certainly didn't work for the Dreamcast (damn it). But does being expensive and inaccessible preclude success? I think you can make that argument, if by "success" you mean financially.
Remember how Sony famously called the PS3 an "aspirational" product? [Note: anyone who says their gaming console is "aspirational" should be fired immediately, and then fired a second time.] Many of the things Microsoft is posturing now remind me of things Sony said before the launch of the PS3. I think Microsoft is positioning the Xbox One as a borderline "elite" product. Less mass-market, more exclusive.
Don't like that.
Dennis Bond sent me an article today about a demographic I mentioned recently: the people who only use 3G/4G to access the Internet. I thought it was a small demographic, but
The Rise of the Mobile-Only User (Harvard Business Review) corrects that misconception:
Young adults: 50 percent of teen smartphone owners, aged 12-17, say they use the internet mostly on their cell phone, according to a 2013 Pew Internet report on Teens and Technology. Similarly, 45 percent of young adults aged 18-29 reported in 2012 that they mostly go online with a mobile device.
Black and Hispanic adults: 51 percent of black Americans and 42 percent of Hispanic Americans who use a mobile device to access the internet say that's the primary way they go online — about double the 24 percent of white Americans who say they rely on their mobile devices for access.
Low-income adults: People whose household income is less than $30,000 per year and people with less than a college education are also more likely to rely on their mobile devices for access — about 40 percent of people in these groups say they primarily use their cell phone to go online.
Maybe Microsoft has some kind of way to accommodate the people who only have mobile broadband access. They don't have a way to accommodate people with no broadband access, though.
Here's a pro-Microsoft perspective: the mass-market console is dead. It can't be revived. The market itself has been ripped apart, and what's re-formed is a substantially smaller market that wants a higher-end product. The only way to survive is to ignore the fish and focus on the whales.
Here's the thing, though: there will always be many, many more fish than whales. Many, many more.
How did Microsoft make its fortune? With fish.
