As Jakob Nielsen has shown, what people say influences them and what actually does are two different things. I recall asking my salesperson, the last time I bought a cell phone, how much looks affected the buying choices of people. She said people say they don't care about looks, but when they're shown a phone that fits their needs, it's not unusual for them to say "I don't like how that looks, let's try another." Not to say these numbers are wrong, just suspect, especially the 5% for advertising (few people like to admit that advertising influences them).

Written reviews clearly affect choices, but aren't mentioned--maybe they're much of the remaining 23%?

So 39% of gamers are at least 45 years old. Something for designers and hard-core twitch-fans to remember.

I also think this is slightly misleading. I myself buy most games based off word of mouth and reviews (are reviews counted as word of mouth?). People first have to buy the game before they can tell their friends about it. Those people that do buy first would have to be influenced by advertising, if they didn't know a game existed they wouldn't buy it. Of course that could also be because of good box art. Lastly good advertising is such that you think of a product before another without realising the ad made you think that way.

However I would agree advertising is a much smaller influence on gamers that marketing people would like. Only need to be stung by hype a couple of times to be extremely cautious.

Also Lewis they didnt give stats for 12-20 year olds, so thats 39% for them and 45+ people together :P

Stephen, it was oddly listed so easy to miss, but they did cite 24% for 2-12 year olds: "NPD also calculated gamer demographics, a frequently-studied area, and determined 24 percent of gamers -- the largest demographic group -- to be between the ages of 2 and 12." It really is 39% for 45 and up, a very large chunk.

You can always suspect such surveys, as they tend to be self-selecting in many cases, hence skewed. Phone surveys for example, which tend to be give the widest coverage: I will never take the time to do one, so I've self-selected people like me out of the population. How do you survey 2 year olds? And many surveys don't even bother with fairly random (usually phone) selection, so they're even more likely to get the core folks rather than a chunk of "everyone".

Still interesting to read, just not terrifically trustworthy.

Sigh. Well, *I'm* the one who can't read, I see that the 12-25 year olds aren't listed. They must be less than the largest group at 24%; which still leaves at least 13% over 45. Sorry.

I saw this coming a mile off. I remember when all the fiasco over stupidly rediculous review scores blew up. I said then and have continued to say since, that gamers now don't trust the games media. It's increasingly obvious that the media is effectively paid off by the software comapnies to hype particular games and give inflated review scores for early review releases.

What has puzzled me is why the games press don't simply collectively refuse the practice. It's not like any games companies can threaten to not send them review copies if they don't comply. After all if they do that then they don't get any coverage of their game and the press will simply fixate on someone elses games. In short they loose. Instead the press simply take the back handers and write pretty much whatever they are asked to. I've actually seen games writers sending their copy off to a games company for approval for frak sake!

No wonder gamers no longer trust anything but, the word of their friends. Often one will buy a game and if it's good, the others will follow. If it's not, then you don't just loose one slae, you loose the sales of everyone in that group. With facebook and other social networks becoming the norm, that can be quite a dent in sales!