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NEW YORK, Oct 5, 2006 (UPI via COMTEX) -- The annual Nielsen Interactive Entertainment study has found that 64 percent of the more than 65 million active online U.S. gamers this year were women.
The Hollywood Reporter said Nielsen's third annual Active Gamer Benchmark Study found that 117 million U.S. citizens spend a minimum of one hour on a gaming device per week and of the 56 percent that do so online, nearly two-thirds were surprisingly female.
While teenagers remain the largest portion of this technological population, Nielsen researchers say that expansion of video games onto the Internet has opened the door for age and gender diversification.
The report also found that while women are increasingly participating in online gaming, men still dominate the overall gaming environment by more than a 2-to-1 ratio with 64 percent playing their games on a personal computer.
Each active gamer spends an average of five hours per week playing games, while the average teenage player spends 13 hours a week gaming, the Reporter said.
URL: www.upi.com Copyright 2006 by United Press International
