来自NPD集团周三发布的研究，美国玩家每周花费在游戏的时间正在逐年上升。一般玩家每周玩游戏的时间从2009年的12.3小时上升为2010年的13个小时。

当然也有部分的游戏狂热者，他们每周花在游戏的时间超过2天，达到了48.5小时，这部分人占据了游戏市场份额的4%。

游戏市场

细分到各个游戏种类，花费在掌上游戏的时间每周增长了9%，PC游戏也上涨了6个百分点。游戏玩家的平均年龄也从31岁上升到32岁。

The average time spent playing games rose year-on-year in the U.S., research firm NPD Group said Thursday.

U.S. gamers ages 2 and up spend 13 hours per week playing games, according to a summary of the firm’s Gamer Segmentation 2010 report. That’s up from 12.3 hours per week in 2009.

The players that log the most hours — a category NPD dubbed “extreme gamers” — averages 48.5 hours per week, or over two days of gaming. Extreme gamers make up just 4 percent of the market, NPD said.

Overall, the number of hours spent playing console games per week grew 9 percent, and the time spent playing PC games rose 6 percent. Portable gaming hours fell 16 percent among U.S. gamers.

Gamers’ average age increased slightly from 2009 as well, up to 32 from 31 years of age. “Avid” PC gamers and offline PC gamers are the segments with the oldest players, with gamers averaging 42 years old in both categories.

NPD didn’t provide hard sales figures, but said that 17 percent of games were purchased digitally, according to the survey, up from 16 percent in 2009. Avid PC gamers are the most frequent downloaders, with 30 percent of their games in the past three months being purchased digitally.

Gamers are also buying and receiving games more frequently, with the number of console and portable games acquired rising 16 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

NPD said it polled 18,872 members of a consumer panel through an online survey in January this year to collect the data for the report.