Girls are playing video games in greater numbers according to a new 2009 study by NPD which was conducted last April.

The study finds that the Wii is the main culprit, saying that Nintendo’s console has attracted a much larger number of females than ever before. And it’s not just girls who are playing the Wii either, boys are too. The study shows that Wii usage overall has increased by 19% from last year.

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The biggest highlight of the study says that females now make up 28% of the console gaming demographic, which is up from 23% in 2008. Although the NPD study only concerns consoles, last April a Nielson study found that females make up a whopping 50% of the PC gaming market and contributed to the high sales of The Sims 3, which sold over 1.4 million copies in its first week.

Here are some other interesting numbers from the study:

* Extreme Gamers, as they are called in the study, played an average of 39 hours per week. Although that may seem high, it’s down from 46 hours last year.

* However Extreme Gamers still SPEND the most money on videogames, even if they actually MAKE the least amount of money (they have the lowest overall average of household income).

* Extreme Gamers purchased an average of 24 titles in 2008’s holiday season.

* However Extreme Gamers only make up a petty 4%(!) of all gamers.

* 38% of the time spent playing games by gamers, was spent playing them online. Relatively the same as 2008.

The Gamer Augmentation 2009 study by NPD Group was conducted in January 2009 with more than 20,000 participants ages 2-65 and above and includes data from the 2008 holiday season. Survey data was weighted to portray gaming trends only within the US.

Via GameSpot

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