Dan Pearson Monday 15th September 2014 Share this article Share

Companies in this article Ipsos

New data from GameTrack and IPSOS has cast some interesting light on the scope and make-up of Europe's gamers, indicating that France and Germany are both bigger markets than the UK for packaged and online games, with apps showing more consistent, albeit smaller audiences.

The quarterly reports are the result of two surveys - an offline questionnaire answered by a sample of 1000 18+ adults and a longer piece with 6000 respondents. The shorter survey is used to weight and balance the wider results and includes answers given by parents on behalf of their children.

Most of the results are concerned with the demographics of the gaming audiences of France, Germany, Spain and the UK, with the most recent results covering the second quarter of 2014.

In terms of pure reach, across all and any platform, the latest results show France as having the greatest percentage of players, with 60 per cent, with Germany on 50, the UK on 41 and Spain at 40 per cent. However, in terms of headcount, Germany's 30 million estimated gamers edge out France's 29 million and dwarf the UK's 19 million and Spain's 14 million.

Although that figure for the UK market may seem surprisingly small in comparison, GameTrack's data does indicate that the UK's players are the most dedicated, with respondents indicating an average of eight hours played a week, compared to Germany's seven, France's six and Spain's five.

Splitting the figures into loose formats gives some more interesting insight: packaged and online games are still reporting higher engagement than apps. As the tables below show, apps consistently report the smallest audiences in terms of both percentages and numbers across all four territories in the surveys.

UK France Germany Spain Percentage playing packaged games 24% 30% 23% 21% Percentage playing apps 19% 19% 17% 13% Percentage playing online games 22% 35% 29% 17%

UK France Germany Spain Number playing packaged games 11m 15m 14m 7m Number playing apps 9m 9m 10m 5m Number playing online games 11m 17m 18m 6m

The surveys define packaged games as anything requiring physical discs or cartridges, apps as all smartphone or tablet games, paid or otherwise, and online as free, freemium or subscription MMO, games downloaded online, also free and paid, as well as browser, social and on demand subscription services such as OnLive.

A slightly deeper dive into platform, splitting between console, PC/Mac, handheld, smartphone and tablet, can be seen in the table below.

UK France Germany Spain Percentage/number playing on console 25%/12m 30%/15m 19%/12m 21%/8m Percentage/number playing on handheld 12%/6m 18%/9m 10%/6m 11%/4m Percentage/number playing on PC/Mac 24%/11m 43%/21m 39%/24m 23%/8m Percentage/number playing on smartphone 21%/10m 26%/13m 23%/14m 18%/7m Percentage/number playing on tablet 17%/8m 20%/10m 9%/6m 10%/4m

The latest results also show a 55/45 percentage split between male and female players in the UK, a straight 50/50 in France, 52/48 in Germany and 53/47 in Spain. On the whole, female gamers report as older than male, although the key 15-30 demographic is still strong for both genders.