Games Stay out in Front

But micro owners are finding other uses for their machines

In households across the U.S. there are now some 4 million personal computers, compared with only 70,000 at the end of the past decade. In those pioneering days only a handful of programs were available, and game playing was the principal pursuit of the home-computer owner. Today software programs number in the thousands, and game playing is still the main use of home computers. Nonetheless, two recent surveys by the Gallup and Roper organizations show that this pattern is starting to change.

Gallup found that 51% of the PC owners it surveyed use their machines to play such video games as Frogger, Choplifter and Deadline. But many enthusiasts put their home machines to multiple use, and some of those other applications now run a close second to game playing. Forty-six percent of the home-computer owners interviewed said they use micros to do accounting or make business forecasts; 46% said they utilize them to teach their children spelling and mathematics. A sizable slice of the sampling, 37%, said they balance their checkbooks or household budgets on the machines. Less than 10% use them to store recipes or count calories.

The Roper survey, which phrased its poll questions somewhat differently, found that 75% of those interviewed in homes with computers used them for both video-game playing and calculations. In the 18-to-29 age category, 25% expressed interest in using a micro. That percentage dropped to 16% in the 30-to-44 bracket; to 9% with the 45-to-59 crowd; and to a minuscule 3% among the over-60 generation. Similarly, disapproval of personal computers rose with age: 28% in the 18-to-29 group, and all the way up to 87% for those 60 and older.

Buying computers to teach children is increasingly important in the consumer market. Roper found that families with teen-agers were 50% more likely than the average household to have computers. Some surprising statistics: only 2% of computer owners in the Gallup survey expressed little satisfaction with their machines, and only 1% said that they were "not at all satisfied."

Game playing among home-computer users should remain strong. According to Future Computing Inc., a Texas-based market-research firm, 52% of all home software sold this year, totaling some 12 million packages, will be entertainment programs; about 16%, or 4 million packages, will be educational programs. Those figures are up from 4 million home-entertainment programs and 1.4 million educational programs sold in 1982. The statistics, however, can be misleading. Game programs, say experts, have short life spans. People play games constantly, tire of them quickly and demand new diversions. Business and educational programs, on the other hand, are used again and again.

The surveys suggest that a number of useful programs will have to be created to entice a large body of new purchasers. "People at the low end of the market, with $100 machines, are interested only in games," says Gallup Vice President John McNee. "More knowledgeable purchasers, who buy more expensive machines, want all kinds of new things. With them lies the future of the personal computer." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.