Survey Says: Women Spend More on Virtual Goods

According to a survey from VGMarket, women spend more money than men when it comes to social gaming. The survey found that female gamers spent $15 more per year on "first-party purchases" in social games than men, and twice as much on in-game money. Women 25 years old and older in North America spent a lot more on virtual currency and items than men: overall spending was $80 for females and $60 for males, even though 78 percent of 2221 respondents were men.

The original survey also found that 75 percent of respondents had purchased digital goods within the last 12 months; but it only polled users of micro-transaction sites PlaySpan, its subsidiary Ultimate Game Card and Facebook currency service Spare Change. It should also be noted that the survey was commissioned by PlaySpan; later VGMarket removed the 75 percent statistic has now been removed from the survey, because it only sampled PlaySpan customers. While the survey's methodology was slightly exclusionary in its questioning and only offered a narrow look into spending habits on certain services, it's still of interest.

Other interesting data from the survey: the average respondent spent 23.7 hours a week playing games; an average of 8.4 social network games and 17 iPhone/iPod Touch games in a year; buying from the three sites mentioned earlier, respondents spent more money per year on items for social games than for any other genre - $50 compared to $40 for MMOs, $40 for free-to-play games and $20 for console games with online play.

Source: GI.biz, image credit financegeek.com.