The year 2009 is slowly coming to an end. While many will post the best games of 2009, I’d just like to point out a nice fact – the number of female gamers grew this year.

According to an official report by the NPD, there was a growth of 5% versus last year. From 23% growth in 2008 to 28% in 2009. Said growth attributed to console gaming “Since the rise in console usage among Console Gamers can be mainly attributed to the Wii, which increased in usage by 19 percentage points from last year.”

Here are some more excerpts from the report:

“Last year was one of the most transformative in history in terms of defining the audience for gaming, said Anita Frazier, industry analyst, The NPD Group. “Even with the increased competition from mobile and social network gaming, the console gamer segment added the most new participants to its ranks in the last year.”

Extreme Gamers are in a league of their own when it comes to hours played and titles purchased. Extreme Gamers play an average of 39 hours a week, which is 10 hours more than the next highest segment in terms of hours played, Avid PC Gamers. Purchasing 24 titles throughout Q4 2008, Extreme Gamers purchased more than six times the number of games compared to any other segment.

While Extreme Gamers have become somewhat less extreme in their game play in terms of hours per week spent on gaming (down by close to seven hours relative to 2008), they still spend the most time on gaming compared to all other segments. Even with the lowest household income, Extreme Gamers buy more than four times the number of titles compared to other segments.

Even though Extreme Gamers play and buy much more, their impact on that market is minimal due to their very small size, only 4 percent of total gamers. In fact, they under-indexed (using the market size opportunity index) on frequency, console and portable ownership.

In terms of online game play, on average, 38 percent of gamers’ time was spent playing a game online, with the rest being played offline. This is flat when compared to the previous year, so despite focus of industry on more online game play opportunities, there is not that much of an increase in the number of gamers taking advantage of it.

On average, 16 percent of games purchased in Q4 2008 were downloaded digitally, but the average number of gamers willing to pay for all types of micro-transactions decreased over last year.

“This could be caused by the increased availability of free gaming, putting a downward price pressure on the industry,” said Frazier.

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