"The growth of online Xbox gamers is impressive, more than doubling its penetration since last year," said Anita Frazier, entertainment industry analyst, The NPD Group. "The number of gamers playing online via Microsoft's Xbox has been on the rise, especially among females and teens. However, the Xbox is still a much smaller contender when compared to the PC/Mac for usage penetration among the total online gaming market."
In terms of the types of games played on each system, PlayStation 2 users have a higher propensity to play sports games online, whereas Xbox users are more likely to play shooting games online. On the PC/Mac platform, online card/puzzle/arcade/word games have experienced a decline in usage penetration since last year, while massively multi-player online games have experienced a healthy increase in usage penetration since last year. Males mostly drove these changes occurring on the PC/Mac platform.
The report is based on online survey responses from more than 2,000 members of NPD's online consumer panel. These respondents are qualified PC/Mac, PlayStation 2 and/or Xbox users who play games online via these systems. The survey data is weighted to represent the population of individuals ages 13 to 44 in the U.S.