NPD says 170 million gamers in the US

Rejoice ye gamers, you are not alone. No, there are many of us and we hold hands in peace and harmony across America… or we’re shooting each other online. Either way there’s 170,000,000 of us according to the NPD’s recently released 2009 Gamer Segmentation Report and we like playing games. Studies can be so revealing sometimes.

That number is an increase of 4.3 million since 2008 and NPD took the liberty of breaking it down a bit more. They’ve found seven groups of gamers in the U.S. The biggest is no surprise, and is the “Secondary Gamers” (33.6 million). These are mostly female gamers who play less than four hours a week and don’t own a console. The segment that has grown the fastest over the past year is the mostly male “Console Gamers” (32.9 million), who own at least one or two dedicated gaming machines and play around 12 hours per week. Sadly, it seems that heavy portable gaming is shrinking with the “Heavy Portable Gamers” group (30.0 million), who own at least one portable and are the youngest group, growing smaller. The smallest section is the “Extreme Gamers,” who play over 40 hours a week, and probably need some sunlight.

There’s a few more interesting numbers that point out that PC gaming is actually growing. If you’d like to pay money to read them you can go here.