Nielsen: Gaming budgets shifted to mobile, leisure activities in 2010

Nielsen research firm has published it's latest finding on videogames, and it finds that consumers are spending less money on games and more on leisure activities and mobile phone entertainment, despite gaming buying households making up 26 percent of US homes in 2010.

According to the firm, the share of money spent per household on gaming dropped 8.5 percent in 2010 from 9.3 percent in 2009. Entertainment budgets for the same households rose to 25.1 percent in 2010, up from 20.4 percent in 2009.

Entertainment budgets consisted of everything from eating out to shopping, to visiting a park and other leisure activities non-gaming related like going to films or renting movies.

"These decreases [in game spend and other categories] took place even as household leisure budgets increased by 9 percent from 2009 among video game buying homes," said Nielsen, via Gamasutra.

Nielsen said despite this, the amount of money spent on gaming was around the same year-on-year, it's just that the budget share could be moving from standard games to mobile gaming.

"The same logic may apply to the other categories that experienced slight declines in share," said the firm. "The screen is shifting but the content may be the same."