According to a new study released earlier this week by Nielsen Entertainment in their third annual Active Gamer Benchmark Study, women make up 64% of North America's 117 million online gamers - and we aren't lying. The study did not reveal any particular genre or game type that were being played by women, but it is expected that online browser games such as Zuma on various flash websites made up a large proportion of the female online gamers. Although many traditional online games such as Halo or CounterStrike were primarily aimed towards males, the rise of RPGs and large-scale online titles such as World of Warcraft appear to have attracted more female gamers to the online scene.

Another surprising result from the latest study is the amount of older gamers that are also interested in online gaming. As you'd expect, the teenage market dominates any other age group in numbers, but the study does say that more than 15 million gamers (about 8%) are actually at least 45 years old. The study involved 2,200 gamers described as "active" who were 13 years or older and owned a gaming device and played games at least once a week.