Research conducted by Newzoo on behalf of the games firm revealed there’s more than 153 million gamers across the three countries, and the encompass game consoles, casual game sites, social networks, mobile devices, downloadable games and boxed games. Furthermore, 68 percent of UK men that were surveyed and 59 percent of women play games, which is the highest percentage across the three countries. However, when it came to average spend on games per month, France came top with the equivalent of £22.30 per month. Brits spend £18.60 per player per month on games. In total, the UK spends £3.6bn per year on purchasing computer games. Nearly half (44 percent) of this is spent on console games, while 11 percent accounts for money spent on casual gaming sites and 10 percent is spent on mobile games. Computer games are most popular with the 10 to 20 age range, with 87 percent of this group admitting to being gamers. “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,” stated 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.”
