The Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia has released a new report - Interactive Australia 2009. Prepared by Bond University, the new study shows changing trends on the demographic of gamers, along with some other surprising figures. The study, which encompassed 1,614 households, and 4852 gamers, found that 68% of the sample size considered themselves gamers.

Of these households it was found that 88% of Australian households have (some sort) of electronic device capable of playing a computer game. Consoles proved more popular - with 43% of the market, with PCs a close second, at 39%. Other findings concluded that the average age of an Australian gamer is now 30 (an increase from 28), when the survey was previously run, in 2007.

A myriad of other findings are outlined in the report - and we've got some of the more interesting numbers for you.

Players: * The oldest gamer in the survey was aged 88. * Females constitute 46% of the gaming population as of July 2008. * Gamers are more likely to be enrolled in full-time tertiary study and non-gamers are more likely to be seniors no longer in the work force. * Only 3% of all gamers NEVER play with others (either in the same room or on the Internet) * Gamers live in households with modestly higher incomes than those of non-gamers. Classification: * 63% of participants do not realise Australia has no R18+ classification for games. * 91% of Australian adults (including gamers AND non-gamers) think that Australia should have an R18+ classification for games. * 92% of parents say they are aware of the games that are played in their homes. Industry: * The Australian computer games industry is growing at an annualised rate of more than 15% and conducted over AUD1.3 billion in 2007 according to GfK point of sale data. * Strategy, FPS, Simulation, RPG and MMORPG and other pay-as-you-go online games made up the top five PC game genres in 2007-2008 according to unit sales data from GfK and account for 70% of PC games. * 70% of Australians mainly purchase games new from a local retailer, 19% download games from online vendors. * Console games accounted for 82% of all game software sales in the financial year 2007-2008.

Other statistics in the survey showed that of the consoles in Australia - the Wii (present in 14% of homes) is the most popular current gen machine, followed by the PS3, which is present in 9% of the homes surveyed. The Xbox 360 is present in 7% of Australian homes. If you're interested in looking at the other findings, the entire report is available on the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia Website, and is downloadable in PDF form.