The report comes from a survey of more than 7,900 core gamers ages 9 and up conducted in March. The research firm defined "core gamer" as anyone who plays five hours or more on Microsoft or Sony consoles, PC, or Mac, and plays in certain genres (action, adventure, fighting, flight, MMOs, racing, real-time strategy, RPGs, shooters, or sports games) on those platforms.
The NPD Group put the total US core gamer audience at 34 million people, with the average player spending 22 hours a week on games. Two-thirds of them also played games on mobile devices, and 70 percent played multiplayer games at least occasionally.
"Core gamers are really the lifeblood of the industry, spending tremendous amounts of time on their hobby of choice," said NPD analyst Liam Callahan. "With the new console generation off to a great start, we can expect the amount of time spent gaming to increase as more core gamers adopt them."
