The Nielsen Company released a year-end look at the most popular trends among Americans during 2008. PlayStation 2, World of Warcraft and Tetris top the lists this year. The following are the published video game top lists included in the report.  Download the full report. ... more.

This recent Nielsen data was released that reports the US game console usage by age over the period of April 2007 through February 2008.  Data shows the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 dominating the Wii in average usage per day in both demographics.   Here is some additional data: The console household universe has grown 18.5% since fourth quarter 2004, compared to a  1.6% growth in th... more.

Girls want to play video games. But boys aren't interested in making the games that girls want to play. Those are the basic findings of a new study by researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas. The analysts surveyed 43 mothers, along with 57 daughters between the ages of 7 and 20, in California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, Texas and Utah. The study, "Serious Games for... more.

Inspired by the previous post, I wondered how the DS vs PSP would compare when using Google Trends. Looks like there is more PSP search inquires, while DS leads in news references. ... more.

Bashar over at BlogAllAlong found this interesting data when he compared PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii, the following is the results. Here is the regional breakdown: Now for a detailed look at how the graph looks for console demand in the land of games, Japan: Does this data surprise anyone? [source]... more.

New research from The NPD Group shows that 62 percent of the gamer population is playing games online nowadays. Most are playing online on the PC, but among consoles Xbox 360 had the highest use. Overall, most online gamers are casual gamers despite the influx of MMOs. We speak with industry analyst Anita Frazier. In a sign of the increasing importance of online gaming in today's video game mar... more.

Prof. Dmitri Williams, one of the leading academics in the gaming space, who was an expert witness at the U.S. Senate on the constitutionality of game banning laws, held a roundtable on game addiction at GDC. Williams referenced Carnegie Mellon University A. Fleming Seay's research on addiction in an MMO context. The addiction, defined as "problematic use" by Seay, is when an entertainment prod... more.