Casual gaming taking over the place of other daily entertainment

Bejeweled Deluxe (Jewel Case)A substantial minority of American adults would rather spend their free time playing casual games, such online diversions as “Bejeweled” and “TextTwist”, than watch television.

A study by Harris Interactive found that 31% of the over-18 year olds set preferred the games to TV for whiling away a spare hour. Watching movies at home fared better, with 21% choosing games instead, but going to the movie theater did slightly worse with 35%.

RealNetworks commissioned the study to understand its customers better, company senior vice president worldwide games Michael Schutzler said. He added that they were very surprised by some of the findings…

In the report the numbers for women older than 40, nearly half (49%) would play casual games rather than go to the movie theater, 32% opted for them over movies at home, and 37% chose them over watching TV.

Schutzler said RealNets began offering games six years ago. “It really wasn’t going well,” he added. “Then just for the heck of it we tried ‘Bejeweled.’ It immediately sold hundreds of times anything else we ever offered.” Via Yahoo