Australians' love for playing video games continues even if they have moved from their teens into adulthood. They have been playing video games for at least two decades, which explains why a new study found that 92 per cent of Australian households are into video games.

The average age of video game players in the country is 30 years old or above, which only means that Aussies have moved from using joysticks when they were kids to more high-tech devices such as their mobile phones or iPads.

According to the study, 43 per cent use their cellular phones to play games and 13 per cent their tablet computers. Game consoles are also popular, with 63 per cent of Aussie homes owning one, while 13 per cent have dedicated handheld consoles.

Those who play video games on their PCs and consoles use it to have fun and relax, while those who use smartphones and tablets use it to while away time. On the average, they play video games 30 to 60 minutes every other day.

The video gamers, now parents, have also passed on the habit to their children that playing video games is now a family activity.

"Four in five parents are playing video games with their children and most believe it's a great way to educate and spend time with their children.... Australian gamers are growing up and 43 per cent of people aged over 50 now play video games," Interactive Games & Entertainment Australia (IGEA) Chief Executive Officer Ron Curry said in a statement.

With Aussies playing video games even as they grow older and introducing their kids to it, the proportion of homes with game devices such as Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation grew to the current 92 per cent from 78 per cent in 2005.

However, more Australians are no longer buying devices to play video games. They instead download the games online, made possible by better bandwidth and attractive pricing offers by Internet service providers. As a result, the percent of survey respondents who downloaded games from online stores went up to 22 per cent from 11 per cent in 2009.

IGEA chief researcher Jeff Brand pointed out that some of the video games have large files ranging from 2GB to 4GB for top-rated titles, and despite their size and limited broadband capacity in Australia, they continue to download these video games.

Mr Brand added with the expansion of Australia's National Broadband Network, the 22 per cent would even go up as more media include video games in their pages, especially in the education sector.

Large textbook publishers such as Pearson and Macmillan have recently shifted to digital formats to keep up with the times. He said these publishers would likely embed video games into their e-books.

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