While it's a great idea to try to expand to non-extreme (Hardcore) gamers, it should be noted that its a VERY bad idea to alienate your existing (and known) market. As the old saying goes " 90% of your business is done by 10% of your customers". While extreme gamers only equal 3% of all gamers, their buying habits rate them MUCH higher in value across the market...and as another old saying goes "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".

But, with their buying habits one would presume that the difficulty of 'hitting the mark' is less than going after a group that doesn't buy 24 titles in a three month period. Not saying it's easy, just that you have to wonder if you already have their money before the game is released. That's something the other markets may not have.

As much as I love to prospect of everyone in the world becoming a "gamer", I don't want to see this industry change the kinds of games it makes. Rather, I'd simply like to see the kinds of games on the market expand.

I really don't see the validty to this classification system. Even if we assume that all of their information is accurate, their 'extreme gamer' is someone who spends over 20 hours a week on gaming, while 'console gamers' spend 8. Based on this report alone, what we are saying is that someone who spends 8 hours a week playing video games is NOT a core gamer? This alienation is unnecessary- there is always going to be a slope of 'time spent playing' vs 'percentage of gamers'. Drawing a line in that slope only corrupts your data.

Based on that, I don't know what they are trying to prove... aside from the obvious shock value of saying "only 3% of gamers are 'extreme'" which is as subjective as it is irrelevent.

Also, this whole 'young and heavy' distinction doesn't settle with me. Are we then to consider that someone who owns a DS, but no consoles or PCs to be in the same category of 'gamers'? Aside from the obvious fact that handheld systems are much cheaper than consoles, there is not one breed of person called a 'gamer' who one day makes a choice between a handheld or a console. 85% of Americans own cell phones, game developers focus on mobile communication technologies to meet the needs of this demographic? No... because while they use electronics, they are not the same as people who use consoles.

I think the report would be better suited to giving us raw data instead of drawing pre-mature conclusions based on the their biased comparisons. As far as I can see, this information is too corrupt to be of much use in the business sense