According to the company's survey, Russian-speaking online gamers grew younger and became more diversified in terms of gender, regions of residence and product preferences while the value of Russian localization remained high.

NIKITA ONLINE, one of the leading Russian online games publishers, shares the results of its annual survey conducted on the audience of the GameXP entertainment web-portal (http://www.gamexp.ru/).

The basis of population of the research increased by more than 40% compared to the last year's one and exceeded 10 million unique users which amounts to one-fifth of Russian active internet audience. Thus the survey gives an insight into Russian online-gamers socio-demography and consumer behavior in whole.

As the electronic questionnaire revealed, the biggest inflow of users came from under 19 y.o. age cohort which grew by 5% through the past year. The number of users with less than a year of gaming experience also increased by 5% and now counts for 38% of total audience. At the same time women gamers had 4% income in their ranks and their total number reached 32%.

Last year NIKITA ONLINE launched seven game titles of various types and genres which explains not only the inflow of newcomers but the shift in the users' preferences as well: casual and session games became more popular. Though, chosen by 70% of users, fantasy RPG kept the throne.

The audience geography diversified as well. Moscow is still the capital city of online gaming with 41% of users living there. But the total value of regional audience is much higher putting together Russian federal subjects (28%), Saint Petersburg (19%), CIS and the Baltics (10%)

Advanced English-speakers represented only by 6% of users are traditionally in minority. 85% of audience named game's availability in Russian as one of the most important product features.

"Regular studying of the audience helps us to build more effective business strategy," states NIKITA ONLINE's Corporate Communications Director Sergey Kolesov. "However, considering the size of our user base and the overall scale of the research, the insights we received are of great value not only for the company but for the Russian online games market in whole. And we are glad share it."

The research report is available here: http://www.nikitaonline.ru/files/downloads/audience_survey_march2013_eng.pdf.Stepan Zotov


Zotov