The biggest spenders on mobile? Men who like console games

Video game analytics firm EEDAR has released some interesting new statistics on mobile game users -- including a few which may just overturn some of our preconceived notions and biases about the mobile audience. According to EEDAR's recently released report drawn from data on 3,000 mobile and tablet users, two-thirds (66 percent) of the biggest mobile spenders ("whales") are men. The report qualifies this audience as the top 5 percent of those paying toward mobile titles. Overall, women and men were more or less evenly split across the general mobile audience, 56 percent female to 44 percent male. However, men composed just 35 of non-paying players, and 59 percent of all paying players ("whales" or otherwise). There are a few other things to keep in mind. "Whales" among the respondents were more likely to spend more time playing games overall, including for console and handheld. On average, big spenders on mobile devoted 26.5 hours of time to games per week, with around a quarter of that time (24 percent) spent on consoles. So while this reaffirms the notion that many players are heavily invested across multiple platforms, it also flies in the face of the idea that mobile is a necessarily "casual" market. "It is a fair statement that a portion of our top mobile spenders are part of the core console gaming community," EEDAR's Jesse Divnich tells GamesIndustry International. "It's not surprising. Core gamers have been conditioned to spend money on traditional games and it is fair to assume this habit carries with them into... other gaming verticals." "They likely view it as an investment, as most hobbyists do," Divnich continued. However, Divnich noted the "stigma" against mobile monetization -- especially in-app purchases -- may be driving many big spenders on mobile to avoid labeling themselves as such. Here's the full infographic, via EEDAR.