Ok, here is a statistic bouncing around that may have been blown out of proportion a little.

According to a recent Nielson survey of 3,000 American consumers' entertainment budgets, the average % spending on video games is 4.9%

This puts games ahead of more traditional/mainstream forms of entertainment such as DVDs (3.5%), and subscription TV (4.1%). Escapist and gamepolitics picked this up as a sign of some kind of big shift toward gaming. Yet I’m not so sure % money spent on games necessarily reflects time spent gaming, or its popularity.

As income rises, I think the percentage income a person will spend on DVDs and subscription TV will start dropping sooner than the amount they spend on games.

DVDs are as cheap as they’ve ever been, and most people I know would buy several a month.   New games tend to sell at a premium and the average gamer is unlikely to buy more than 2 or 3 a month. As incomes increase, there will come a point when there are only so many DVDs one can watch in a month, and I believe this point will come faster than the point where a person has spent all they are willing to on games.

Put another way, if a person buys 12 DVDs and 3 games a month now and their income went up, I think they would sooner move up to buying 9 games than they would 40 DVDs.

As far as subscription TV goes, while I have no research to back this up, i would have thought the percentage a person spends on subscription TV is going to rapidly decrease as income increases. If my entertainment budget kept rising, I don’t believe I would keep constantly expanding my range of channels beyond a certain point.

This isn’t to say the statistic isn’t interesting. I just question what conclusions can be drawn from it.