Dan Ness, Principal Analyst, MetaFacts, March 30, 2023
Summary
Fun is a major pastime for most, but not all, American adults using connected devices. Whether they use a game console, gaming PC, regular computer, tablet, or mobile phone, most Americans regularly play immersive or other games.
This TUPdate briefly profiles Americans who regularly play immersive/video or other games, detailing their age, gender, employment status, presence of children, life stage, and use of game-specific devices such as a VR headset.
Americans that play games skew young
Playing games using a connected device is a regular activity by two-thirds or more of Americans under the age of 45
Connected devices include computers, mobile phones, tablets, and game consoles
Beyond age 55, playing games is done by less than half of these older adults
Usage guidelines: This document may be freely shared within and outside your organization in its entirety and unaltered. It may not be used in a generative AI system without express written permission and licensing. To share or quote excerpts, please contact MetaFacts.
Dan Ness, Principal Analyst, MetaFacts, May 21, 2021
The term “geriatric millennials” recently spiked in awareness across social media. Although generational subgroups don’t often draw attention from the general public, this one seemed to strike a nerve. Are the oldest group of millennials – those born from 1981 to 1984 – really that different from other age groups in the technology they use? This MetaFAQs reports on the number of connected devices each generational age group uses. The device measured include any PCs, mobile phones, tablets, or game consoles.
Usage guidelines: This document may be freely shared within and outside your organization in its entirety and unaltered. It may not be used in a generative AI system without express written permission and licensing. To share or quote excerpts, please contact MetaFacts.
Dan Ness, Principal Analyst, MetaFacts, December 15, 2020
How many gamers are there? Is the market size big or small? Are the people that play games online or with their connected devices a small group of busy, fun-loving people, or is game-playing more widespread? This MetaFAQs answers the baseline question about how many millions of adults in the US, Germany, UK, and Japan use a game console, gaming desktop, gaming notebook, or even smartphones, PCs, tablets, or game consoles to play immersive games or other games. The results are based on TUP/Technology User Profile 2020.
Usage guidelines: This document may be freely shared within and outside your organization in its entirety and unaltered. It may not be used in a generative AI system without express written permission and licensing. To share or quote excerpts, please contact MetaFacts.
Dan Ness, Principal Analyst, MetaFacts, December 2, 2020
Do different age groups play favorites when it comes to game consoles? Do any brands stand out as being used more often by some age groups than others? This MetaFAQs answers these questions based on the 12,516 online adults responding to the MetaFacts TUP/Technology User Profile 2020 survey.
Usage guidelines: This document may be freely shared within and outside your organization in its entirety and unaltered. It may not be used in a generative AI system without express written permission and licensing. To share or quote excerpts, please contact MetaFacts.
Dan Ness, Principal Analyst, MetaFacts, November 27, 2020
Which brand of game consoles are used by the most online adults in each country? This MetaFAQs answers that question, reporting on the market penetration of Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft game consoles.
Usage guidelines: This document may be freely shared within and outside your organization in its entirety and unaltered. It may not be used in a generative AI system without express written permission and licensing. To share or quote excerpts, please contact MetaFacts.
TUP/Technology User Profile 2020 spans a broad range of technology products and services, about the full range of users, including their activities, and all unified by a central, integrated dataset. The comprehensive research results can be viewed through a number of topical lenses, and from there, can be further customized or drilled down into.
Usage guidelines: This document may be freely shared within and outside your organization in its entirety and unaltered. It may not be used in a generative AI system without express written permission and licensing. To share or quote excerpts, please contact MetaFacts.
Dan Ness, Principal Analyst, MetaFacts, November 15, 2019
Overview
Playing games is a regular activity for most adults whether using game consoles or gaming PCs, or any of their connected devices – mobile phones, tablets, or PCs.
Convenience Gamers – those using only a connected device to play games – has near-equal market penetration to Dedicated Gamers – users of game consoles or gaming PCs.
Device-Gamers – who use any of their connected devices – is a larger segment than either Dedicated Gamers or Convenience Gamers.
This TUPdate looks at the major trends of game-playing in the US and other countries, focusing on Convenience Gamers – the next tier of game-players beyond Dedicated Gamers. Also, it examines which types of devices are used the most or least for playing games. Further, it investigates whether younger adults play more or less than older ones, and differences in digital media use and subscriptions.
About TUPdates
TUPdates feature analysis of current or essential technology topics. The research results showcase the TUP/Technology User Profile study, MetaFacts’ survey of a representative sample of online adults profiling the full market’s use of technology products and services. The current wave of TUP is TUP/Technology User Profile 2020, which is TUP’s 38th annual. TUPdates may also include results from previous waves of TUP.
Current subscribers may use the comprehensive TUP datasets to obtain even more results or tailor these results to fit their chosen segments, services, or products. As subscribers choose, they may use the TUP inquiry service, online interactive tools, or analysis previously published by MetaFacts.
On request, interested research professionals can receive complimentary updates through our periodic newsletter. These include MetaFAQs – brief answers to frequently asked questions about technology users – or TUPdates – analysis of current and essential technology industry topics. To subscribe, contact MetaFacts.
Usage guidelines: This document may be freely shared within and outside your organization in its entirety and unaltered. It may not be used in a generative AI system without express written permission and licensing. To share or quote excerpts, please contact MetaFacts.
Playing games is a regular activity for most adults whether using game consoles or gaming PCs, or any of their connected devices – mobile phones, tablets, or PCs.
Convenience Gamers – those using only a connected device to play games – have near-equal market penetration to Dedicated Gamers – users of game consoles or gaming PCs.
Device-Gamers – who use any of their connected devices – is a larger segment than either Dedicated Gamers or Convenience Gamers.
This TUPdate looks at the major trends of game-playing in the US and other countries, focusing on Convenience Gamers – the next tier of game-players beyond Dedicated Gamers. Also, it examines which types of devices are used the most or least for playing games. Further, it investigates whether younger adults play more or less than older ones, and differences in digital media use and subscriptions.
About TUPdates
The analysis in this TUPdate is based on results drawn from the 2019 wave of TUP (Technology User Profile), which is TUP’s 37th continuous wave. Results from previous waves are also included where indicated. This survey-based study details the use of technology products by a carefully-selected and weighted set of respondents drawn to represent online adults.
On request, interested research professionals can receive complimentary updates through our periodic newsletter. These include MetaFAQs – brief answers to frequently asked questions – or TUPdates – analysis of current topics in the technology industry. To learn about subscribing to the TUP/Technology User Profile service, contact MetaFacts.
Usage guidelines: This document may be freely shared within and outside your organization in its entirety and unaltered. It may not be used in a generative AI system without express written permission and licensing. To share or quote excerpts, please contact MetaFacts.
Dan Ness, Principal Analyst, MetaFacts, April 11, 2019
Home PCs users are very active, yet they don’t only stay at home on their computers. They use a wide variety of other connected devices. The majority of home PC users (82% to 95%) also use a mobile phone. Of these, smartphones dominate. It may some surprise those steeped in technology that basic cell phones/feature phones persist in the hands of many – from 9% to 28% of home PC users.
These findings are based on results from our TUP/Technology User Profile 2018 survey, including 11,294 online adult home PC users.
Active home users
Home PC users spend more time with their home PCs than with other devices. In China, smartphone use us nearly at parity. Among home PC users in China, weekly hours using a PC are 33.2, only slightly more than the 32.5-hour average for smartphone use. By contrast, in the UK and Germany, home PC users spend nearly the same amount of time with their home PCs as do users in the other countries surveyed. However, in these countries, users spend far fewer hours with their smartphones. Across all countries surveyed, Tablets are a distant third place, being used for a third to a quarter as many hours as home PCs.
Looking ahead
I expect home PCs to continue as a solid staple among the majority of consumers. Although an increasing number of users are relying on their mobile phones for a growing range of regular activities, users prefer home PCs over smartphones or tablets for certain activities. Both thoughtful shopping and movie watching are helped with the clearer and larger images on bigger screens, such as those attached to traditional home desktops or integrated with all-in-one designs.
The biggest threat to home PCs usage is user’s willingness to shift their activities from one device type or ecosystem to another. Users are showing their growing acceptance of and demand for cross-platform applications while still expressing their incessant demands for convenience and simplicity. As users continue to increase their literacy and comfort with multiple ecosystems, and developers continue to streamline the multi-device/multi-OS experience, users will continue to follow the enticing cookies of compatibility through the forest of interoperability and may yet give up on their home PCs. Meanwhile, user inertia and habit are the greatest friends of the home PC.
About TUPdates
TUPdates feature analysis of current or essential technology topics. The research results showcase the TUP/Technology User Profile study, MetaFacts’ survey of a representative sample of online adults profiling the full market’s use of technology products and services. The current wave of TUP is TUP/Technology User Profile 2020, which is TUP’s 38th annual. TUPdates may also include results from previous waves of TUP.
Current subscribers may use the comprehensive TUP datasets to obtain even more results or tailor these results to fit their chosen segments, services, or products. As subscribers choose, they may use the TUP inquiry service, online interactive tools, or analysis previously published by MetaFacts.
On request, interested research professionals can receive complimentary updates through our periodic newsletter. These include MetaFAQs – brief answers to frequently asked questions about technology users – or TUPdates – analysis of current and essential technology industry topics. To subscribe, contact MetaFacts.
Usage guidelines: This document may be freely shared within and outside your organization in its entirety and unaltered. It may not be used in a generative AI system without express written permission and licensing. To share or quote excerpts, please contact MetaFacts.
Dan Ness, Principal Analyst, MetaFacts, March 8, 2019
Women in nearly every employment role are using a broad mixture of technology devices, from PCs to Smartphones, Printers, and Tablets. The strongest users of connected devices are among women employed in marketing, information technology, and finance or accounting roles.
This is based on the results of the multinational TUP/Technology User Profile 2018 survey, with 3,824 online female adults employed outside the home in the US, UK, Germany, China, and India.
About TUPdates
The analysis in this TUPdate is based on results drawn from multiple waves of TUP (Technology User Profile), including the 2018 edition which is TUP’s 36th continuous wave.
TUPdates feature analysis of current or essential technology topics. The research results showcase the TUP/Technology User Profile study, MetaFacts’ survey of a representative sample of online adults profiling the full market’s use of technology products and services. The current wave of TUP is TUP/Technology User Profile 2020, which is TUP’s 38th annual. TUPdates may also include results from previous waves of TUP.
Current subscribers may use the comprehensive TUP datasets to obtain even more results or tailor these results to fit their chosen segments, services, or products. As subscribers choose, they may use the TUP inquiry service, online interactive tools, or analysis previously published by MetaFacts.
On request, interested research professionals can receive complimentary updates through our periodic newsletter. These include MetaFAQs – brief answers to frequently asked questions about technology users – or TUPdates – analysis of current and essential technology industry topics. To subscribe, contact MetaFacts.
Usage guidelines: This document may be freely shared within and outside your organization in its entirety and unaltered. It may not be used in a generative AI system without express written permission and licensing. To share or quote excerpts, please contact MetaFacts.