Report: U.S. gamer population surpasses 135 million

Video games have come a long way in a relatively short time. It seems like only yesterday players moved a handful of sprites across banal backgrounds to simple beeps and boops - the love-labor of a few guys coding in a stuffy garage. Multimillion dollar games, crafted by teams of hundreds and featuring fully-realized worlds, realistic graphics and swelling orchestral scores, have since taken over.

But something else has also changed. The gaming industry has added 80 million players since 2008, according to research firm Parks Associates. Most of them are newbies.

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Traditional video game consoles like the Xbox 360 are losing ground to new social and mobile experiences, said Parks, citing the immense popularity of "FarmVille" and "Angry Birds." Indeed, the latter has been downloaded over 200 million times since 2009.

Titles found within the Apple and Android online shops perfectly match the needs of mobile gamers. They're short; they're sweet; they're cheap; and, most importantly, they're simple. Over half of all U.S. smartphone owners play games, the firm said.

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To be counted in Parks' survey, players needed to spend just one hour each month playing a game. In 2008, that figure stood at 56 million. It's nearly tripled since then.

Hardcore players may scoff, but casual gamers easily outnumber them.

Meanwhile, massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have "stagnated," said Parks. The genre's king, "World of Warcraft," lost 5 percent of its subscription base earlier this year.

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"Gaming is a social activity for casual gamers; however, most players prefer asynchronous multiplayer games as opposed to multiplayer games where everyone plays at the same time," said Parks.

Smartphone and tablet shipments are expected to boom in the coming years, often boasting price points gaming consoles just cannot match. And while it's unlikely those hardy machines will ever die off completely, there's no doubt manufacturers and game publishers would love to find a way to transform those one-hour-per-month "Angry Birds" players into dedicated - and generous - "Call of Duty" players.

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