Women online gamers outnumber men - say wtf?

Conventional wisdom on its head, indeed. Here's a story that's come out of a Nielsen Entertainment survey that reported women online gamers outnumbering men two to one.

Of the online gamers surveyed in a Nielsen Entertainment survey, 64 per cent were female.

In the broader video game sphere, male gamers still outnumber women overall by a factor of two to one, according to the report released on Thursday.

The Nielsen survey also suggested that about eight per cent of gamers are at least 45 years old, but teenagers still comprise the largest portion of all gamers, representing 40 per cent of those who play games.

The survey looked at 2,200 gamers in July who own at least one game device — including game consoles, hand-held devices and PCs.

There are about 117 million video game players over the age of 13 in the United States, 56 per cent of whom play online.

I have to get my hot little hands on these details, for sure. I have played EverQuest, and continue to play World of Warcraft--and know that there is a huge chunk of women involved, but this statistic outdoes the "slightly under half" stat for women online gamers even 2 years ago. Wild. Maybe playing primarily on a PvP server (which tends to attract fewer women and admitting you're a 'girl' still garners somewhat creepy responses) has skewed my thinking!