The result is inside NPD's 2009 Gamer Segmentation Report, and is based on a January survey of nearly 21,000 people. NPD breaks the population down into seven segments, the largest being Secondary Gamers, at 33.6 million. These are mostly female gamers who play less than four hours a week, none of it on a console.

Console gamers, mostly male, are the next largest and fastest-growing segment, at 32.9 million. Then comes Heavy Portable Gamers, heavy describing the amount of play, not their weight. Which is a good thing, most of their 30 million are kids. (Their average age is 19. Ni-ni-ni-ni-nineteen.)

GameSpot broke down the report further. But you get the idea. Video games are everywhere - even someone who doesn't consider himself or herself a gamer, but plays a flash game at work, is a gamer for purposes of this study. So, yay us.

U.S. Gamer Population: 170 Million [GameSpot via Blue's News]

Of course it is. Their surveys must be frequented by A-list developers all the time, because here they felt the need to offer a preemptive apology for any unintended butthurt caused by their legitimate research study question on ethics systems in RPGs.

Frankly, that's the most interesting aspect of the survey, which asks potential God of War III buyers what they'd drop the extra cash on for the PlayStation 3 exclusive. The options include your standard fare—t-shirts, figurines, "Making Of" documentaries and art books—but it's the possibility of backwards compatibility on the PS3 that's noteworthy.

The survey also makes mention of a "God of War and God of War II cinematic movie compilation," which Sony could fall back on if getting God of War and God of War II to play on the no longer backwards compatible console proves too daunting.

We suppose that if Sony could offer PlayStation 2 software on a game-by-game basis like this, it could be worth their while. Say, if they could then sell last-gen games via the PlayStation Store or even patches that would make disc-based versions playable on the PS3 via software emulation.

We'd advise everyone taking the survey to rank "God of War and God of War II on Blu-ray disc" as "most important," just so we can see where they're going with this.

Here's the full list of CE options for those who weren't surveyed.

• Full game soundtrack
• Comic book/Graphic novel
• Exclusive packaging
• God of War and God of War II on Blu-ray disc
• God of War and God of War II cinematic movie compilation
• Art book
• T-shirt
• Collectible items
• Access to exclusive downloadable content
• Behind-the-scenes/"Making of" featurettes
• Developer commentary

Thanks to the horde of PlayStation fans who sent this in! You can stop now!

The developer has expanded its insightful program by providing hardware adoption trends, with six months of data on CPU, GPU and DirectX usage published in handy, easy-to-read pie and line chart formats. Normally, we wouldn't be that jazzed to poke through operating system ratios, but thanks to the nicely constructed aggregation of data, we can't stop wondering things like "I wonder what the most popular multi-monitor desktop resolution is?"

With some 8 million computers surveyed over the course of 4-plus years, we'd say its a pretty solid indicator of who's doin' what out there.

Steam Hardware Survey [Steam]

The main reason, though? World of Warcraft, obviously. At least, that's the opinion of Federal Communications Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate. In a speech to the Practicing Law Institute last week she cited a recent FCC survey,

"You might find it alarming that one of the top reasons for college drop-outs in the U.S. is online gaming addiction - such as World of Warcraft - which is played by 11 million individuals worldwide"

FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College Dropouts [Game Politics]

Multiplayer gamers (statistically speaking) tend to be challenge-oriented, and willing to be aroused to anger as this enhances their eventual reward in fiero when they attain victory. They are not only enjoying fiero, though, they are also enjoying the social element of multiplayer games such as the sense of belonging to a team, feelings of envy and gratitude, and the feeling of naches – the satisfaction of seeing someone you taught to play perform well.

Conversely, single player gamers (statistically speaking) are showing greater interest in having control over the space of their play. This is one way to interpret the lower interest in random elements – these add variety to play, but they also mean the player has less direct control over outcomes. The higher interest in sandbox play can also be interpreted as an increased interest in having complete control over the play space, although undoubtedly other interpretations are possible.

I've enjoyed and continue to enjoy certain types of 'multiplayer' experiences, but I'm certainly not a 'fiero' driven gamer. The rest of the article includes some other little tidbits; I'm curious to see the 'grander' essays on the findings promised.

Playing Together [Only a Game]

Microsoft commissioned a pretty serious poll up in the Great White North, asking Canadians all sorts of questions that sound like a Cosmo bedside astrologer survey, if "game" is used as a euphemism for "sex." Do you game at work? (30 percent). Do you game in the bedroom? (27 percent). The bathroom? (7 percent — WTF?!) In public? (19 percent). And yes, they asked who does it completely bare. The answer 17 percent of Canadian men, 9 percent of Canadian women.

What in the hell could possibly be the use of that information (other than giving bloggers a reason to post something about Microsoft?) The survey seems to include any kind of computer game in the nude question, so playing Minesweeper with your torpedo danglin' is the same as playing Mario Kart Wii nekkid as a jaybird.

Racking my brain, I am not sure that I have ever played a video game completely butt-ass naked. I've had phone conversations on the john, downloaded porn while wishing Grandma a Merry Christmas and other depraved shit, but I could always delay my urge to play Team Fortress 2 until I got a pair of droodies on, at least.

So, of course, this begs our own Kotaku poll. Tell us, have you ever played a game — and for purposes here, we're talking console, PC title, or handheld, but not Facebook games, solitaire or minesweeper — in the nude? Feel free to expand on your answer in the comments.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Poll Finds Number of Canadians Playing Video Games Naked [Digital Home Canada, via The Tanooki]

What the survey fails to take into account is the fact that most drivers between the ages of 16-24 suck, and probably shouldn't be driving in the first place. No offense to any young drivers out there, but it's true. I'd daresay some of them are better off imagining they're in a video game.

Besides, everything you do affects how you drive. Take it from David Perry, who randomly showed up in the BBC article I took the story from.

"Anything that affects your emotions will affect how you drive. The guy in front, the music on the stereo...those are the things that make you speed up, not a game you played an hour ago."

The study, whose sample is comprised of 16,670 participants between ages six and 44, found that 45 percent of the study's "heavy gamer" segment and nearly one-third of its "avid console gamer" segment (the largest group in the study) were between the youthful ages of six and 17. The findings contradict the wide belief that the most committed gamers fall in the coveted 18- to 34-year-old male demographic...

Other highlights of the NPD's segmentation study include the finding that 21 percent of the heavy gamer segment is made up of females. In addition, the entire heavy gamer segment makes up a mere 3 percent of the overall gaming population.

Overall, it looks like the dominance of the 18 to 34 year old gamer is just a myth. In fact, heavy gamers only account for 3% of gamers overall. Might want to consider that next time you fake sick from junior high to write another obscenity-laced thesis on why the Playstation 3 is going to totally RULE. Florian Eckhardt

Is the Core Gamer a Myth? [Next Gen]

Gamasutra reports that according to a recent study, the elusive "casual gamer" is not as flighty a beast as previously thought:

A new report released by Macrovision Corporation, which operates the Trymedia Network for the digital distribution of PC games, reveals that, according to a recent worldwide survey, 37 percent of those who use casual games play nine or more two-hour 'sessions' each week.

This contrasts with assumptions that these mostly female, mostly older gamers were getting in a game of Solitaire or two during the gridlocked part of their morning commute and then returning to their lives as upstanding citizens.

"Just one more game," mutters Granny "Nubk1lla" Grace, gritting her dentures in front of the Xbox. Her wide-eyed grandchildren huddle in a far corner, clutching each other and praying mom and dad will return from vacation sooner than later, and then maybe they'll get something to eat and someone will check on the baby, who hasn't cried in an awful long time... Eliza gauger

Study: 'Casual' Players Exhibit Heavy Game Usage

In Newsweekly, companion website to In Newsweekly, New England's largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender news and entertainment weekly, has posted a story on a new survey meant specifically for GLBT gamers, or "gaymers" as the article so coyly quotates.

The whole piece stinks of two things I hate: splitting an already disadvantaged minority (gamers) into potentially conflicting factions; and assigning previously-constructed stereotypes to the new group.

First we need to prove that homosexual gamers even exist. Yeah it sounds ridiculous, but that's where you have to start on something like this. This survey is an attempt to quantify the existence of an invisible minority.

I think this minority is invisible because who a gamer likes to boink has no practical application here, except possibly as a marketing tool. It's the same issue I have with the constant barrage of "women in games" crowing: the longer we tell each other that a gamer girl is a rare and mysterious thing, the longer she will remain so.

I'm with Dan Savage on this issue. Let homosexuality be normal. True tolerance isn't making special recognitions of your fellow gamers' differences, but simply not caring in the first place.

As a possibly self-defeating aside, I once got warned by Blizzard for saying "hey it's okay to be gay" in Barrens Chat. Amid an ocean of "stfu fagget". So now I say it every chance I get. Eliza Gauger, or possibly Gayger

Gay video game player survey [In Newsweekly]