Though video games have been around for a while now, some still associate the medium with children’s entertainment only. However, new data from the NPD group suggests that the number of middle-aged gamers has increased rapidly in recent years.
The wonderful Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration helps showcase a trend – the aging up of the playerbase.
Here are the number of US video game players (in millions) aged 45+ that played games in 2018, 2020 and 2022. Source: The NPD Group’s 2022 Gamer Segmentation Report pic.twitter.com/NspHZaz8qv— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) November 18, 2022
The above data shows the number of US video game players aged 45+ that played games in 2018, 2020, and 2022–the numbers are 64.9 million, 82.9 million, and 87.0 million respectively. That jump from 2018 to 2020 is about a 28% increase, whereas the gap from 2020 to 2022 is roughly a 5% increase.
We already know that the pandemic triggered a large surge of interest in video gaming, especially in the early lockdown months of 2020. It even led to certain games selling far more than expected, like Animal Crossing: New Horizons. However, though the easing of pandemic restrictions has brought a slight slowdown in video game spending, it’s nice to see that the number of older gamers is still going up.