We have talked about the growth of the gaming community, but we wonder where all those people come from and why the numbers stay steady. Apparently we are not the only ones, as the Entertainment Merchants Association just released their 2009 Annual Report and it shows that while more gamers are joining our ranks, the veteran gamers are not going anywhere.

The report observes that “consumer turnover in the video game market is exceedingly low. Older gamers continue to be engaged by video games, rather than dropping out and being replaced by a new generation. Once a consumer decides to play video games, they continue to play for life – adding to the growing number of gamers worldwide.”

Stating that 68% of all US households currently play videogames, the EMA report says that industry sales reached near $23 billion while just rentals of videogames totaled $541 million. Both numbers, incidentally, are significant increases over previous years’ sales, despite what some might say. To put those numbers in perspective, movie purchases and rentals combined only reached $22.4 billion dollars, which proves that we gamers are the center of the home entertainment industry and will be for a very, very long time.