PlaySpan and VGMarket have just released their findings on a study of the purchasing of virtual goods.  Their results are of interest to developers and publishers, because understanding how and why people buy virtual goods helps them make better virtual goods to buy.

It is also of interest to anthropologists and those who study the differences between the sexes, because the study revealed that while there are more men spending more money on virtual items, per-capita women are spending twice as much as men are!  What does that mean?  It means for while the average male gamer spends $25 dollars on in-game money per year, the average female gamer will spend $50.  For in-game item,s the difference is less but still dramatic :$30 for males over a year and $55 for women.

It is too early to say if there is any causation here though.  Women were the minority in the study, representing less than 15% of the study pool. That gives each individual woman a much greater weight compared to individual men.  Furthermore, the types of games, in general, that men and women play also could have skewed the results.

Regardless, its an interesting number, an interesting result, and if it nothing else it makes for some neat small talk.

(Thanks, Gamasutra)