Last year, the NPD group surveyed over 11,000 people about how much time they play and spend on games. After that, they would break it down. They took another survey earlier this year, this time asking 20,000 people ages 2 through 99 to talk about their purchases and gaming "from approximately November 2007 through January 2008."

According to the results, the 'young heavy' are the largest group, taking up 22% of the gaming population. Young Heavy gamers lean toward the handhelds, with at least 6 gamers out 10 having a PSP and a Nintendo DS.

We now move on to the 'heavy' gamers, which have clocked in over 45 hours a week playing video games, while purchasing 24 games over a three month span. All of these stats are increases from last year, where 'heavy' gamers would go up to 40 hours a week playing games and buy 13.1 games in the same span.

Last but not least, the 'extreme' gamers. They only make up for three percent of the video game population, but they buy and and play more games then any other group does. Most of them game on the Xbox 360 and PS3, as well as purchase downloadable content for their games.

This just in: Extreme Gamers spend more heavily than even heavy gamers. In the follow-up to last year's Games Segmentation II survey, industry-tracking NPD Group found that the highest order of gamers spend on average 45 hours a week playing games, having purchased roughly 24 titles in a three-month period. That's a marked increase from last year, in which the then-top Heavy Gamer demographic spent 39.3 hours a week gaming, purchasing on average 13.1 games over the same period of time.

In this year's Games Segmentation 2008 study, the NPD Group revised its methods slightly, asking more than 20,000 respondents age 2 to 99 to report on their game-playing and purchasing habits from approximately November 2007 through January 2008. Of the 174 million people in the US who identified themselves as game players, the NPD Group derived seven demographic categories. While NPD provided headline statistics for each of these categories, it did not explicitly delineate characteristics of these classes.

tyranitar24 via gamespot.com »