A new international study claims that MMO play accounts for 15 per cent of all game playing time in the US and Europe.

The data comes from a survey of 13,000 respondents aged eight years and older conducted by Gamesindustry.com. The study found that 14 per cent of all time spent on games in the US is dedicated to MMOs, compared to eight per cent in the UK, 16 per cent in Belgium, 13 per cent in Germany and 15 per cent in both France and the Netherlands.

35-40 per cent of European MMO players said that they paid to play MMOs, reports Industry Gamers. The figure was "somewhat higher" in the US, where gamers spend an average of 5.5 hours per week playing MMOs, compared to 4.9 hours for console players and 4.8 hours for casual game portal players.

“The days we could categorise gamers on the basis of a single game platform are long gone,” said Gamesindustry.com MD Peter Warman. “Of the US console players 29 per cent also plays MMOs and 25 per cent on their mobile phone. Also typical for today’s gamers is the fact that more than half of US console gamers (55 per cent) also play on casual game portals. All these platforms are increasingly competing for the time and money of the same consumer.”