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Do Any Rich People Play Video Games?

Research finds gaming among an upper-income audience, but it does not establish how many billionaires play or how often wealthy people game.
Length3 min Posted Quest giverVGSources Team
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Yes. Research on an upper-income audience finds that video-game consoles are common and that many respondents had recently played games on a smartphone. That supports a qualified answer: some affluent people play video games, but the available figures do not tell us how often billionaires play—or whether every wealthy person does.

What does the evidence say about gaming among high-income people?

An Ipsos summary published June 15, 2026 describes its Global Influentials research as studying people in the top 20% by income across 43 markets. The summary reports that 56% of this audience own a video-game or handheld console, and that 44% had played games on a smartphone in the preceding 30 days.

Those findings are evidence of gaming-related ownership and recent play among an upper-income audience. They are not a measure of how frequently respondents play, and they do not establish a rate for billionaires. The Ipsos summary also gives a separate console ownership figure of 48%; because the online summary presents multiple figures and the underlying report was not reviewed, that figure should not be treated as interchangeable with the 56% figure.

Why don’t these numbers tell us how many billionaires play?

“Rich people” can mean many things, from the top fifth of earners to millionaires or billionaires. Ipsos’s reported audience is defined by relative income across 43 markets, not by billionaire status. The figures therefore cannot answer what share of the world’s billionaires play games, nor can they be generalized to every country or wealth bracket.

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The measures also differ: owning a console is not the same as playing, and playing a smartphone game at least once in the past 30 days is not the same as being a regular player. The source does not provide a comparable play-rate estimate across wealth brackets.

How does this compare with gaming in the general population?

U.S. studies show that video games reach a broad audience, but their results are not statistics about wealthy people. They use different populations and definitions, so they should be read separately rather than combined into a single rate.

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Source and date Population and measure Reported result
Circana, 2024 U.S. consumers who play video games 71%; among gamers, 92% play on a smartphone or tablet, and 46% spent zero dollars on video-game products in the preceding six months.
Entertainment Software Association, 2024 Americans ages 5–90 who play at least one hour per week; online U.S. survey conducted October 23–31, 2023, among 5,000 respondents 61%, or approximately 190.6 million people; the report gives the average player’s age as 36.
Pew Research Center, 2015 U.S. adults reporting that they play video games 50% of men and 48% of women said they played; 15% of men and 6% of women said “gamer” described them well.

These figures illustrate how widespread play is, not how play varies by wealth. Circana and ESA report U.S. results; Ipsos’s cited audience spans 43 markets. Their dates, populations, and measures differ, so the results are not a like-for-like comparison.

Does playing mean someone identifies as a gamer?

No. Pew’s 2015 U.S. survey found nearly equal shares of men and women said they played video games, while substantially smaller shares said “gamer” described them well. That distinction matters here: evidence that an affluent person has played a game does not show they use “gamer” as part of their identity.

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What counts as playing a video game?

Gaming is not limited to a dedicated console or a long session at a PC. The CFPB’s issue spotlight on video games discusses play across phones, consoles, PCs, and laptops, as well as in-game transactions and player data. That range of devices helps explain why a smartphone-play measure and a console-ownership measure capture different parts of gaming activity.

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