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Though this holiday shopping season if rife with hype about three new-generation game consoles - namely Sony's PlayStation 3, the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft's jump-starter, the Xbox 360 - it's important to remember that a large segment of consumers simply couldn't care less. Indeed, take at look at any recent market survey and they all tend to illustrate a remarkable trend: casual gaming is on the rise.

The most recent comScore Media Metrix study (release quarterly) revealed that consumers who play games are, on average, 41 years old and that, perhaps surprisingly, 52 percent of all gamers are women. 75 percent of those surveyed fell into the "light/medium" gamer segment, i.e. played video games for less than 11 hours per week.

Macrovision recently announced the results of a worldwide survey that examined the playing habits of casual gamers and revealed the "casual gamer" seem to play even more than that; close to 20 hours per week, with 37 percent playing 9 or more sessions each week. The survey also noted that the 73 percent of them played at night, not during the day on cell phones and PDAs in little spurts as many suspected.

Recent research conducted by Information Solutions Group (on behalf of causal games portal, PopCap), meanwhile, revealed that an estimated 150 million consumers that play casual titles, that 47 percent are age 50 or older, 19 percent are age 60 or older (and summarily dubbed "Grey Gamers").

Though none of the studies corroborate each other perfectly, one thing is clear: casual gamers rule.