- Los Angeles ranks as the top metro for gamers but scored a low affordability score.
- Chicago, Oakland and Seattle also made the top 10 for gamer-friendly metros.
- Honolulu, Austin and Kansas City ranked in the top three for highest download speeds in the nation.
Look outside a Target or Best Buy after Thanksgiving, and you’ll see America’s obsession with electronics — and for many, that passion extends to gaming.
Whether you’re a Playstation or Xbox loyalist, Trulia ranked the ten best metros for gamers, basing it on the number of video game and computer stores, internet speeds and surrounding gamer community.
Trulia also measured median home prices and latency, a measurement in milliseconds that is how long it takes to send a message to a server and receive a response, download speed and store index.
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale ranked in the no. 1 spot for gamers, with a score of 84.7.
The L.A. metro got a game store index of 98, which was just one point below no. 5 ranked Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura. The latency score was 91 in L.A., which scored a 93 for download speed and 95 for gamer community, also. However, the metro’s home price score got a paltry 7 out of 100.
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Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights ranked in the overall 7th spot, with a final index of 71.8. The metro area got an 81 for the store index, 94 for latency, 54 for download speed, 73 for gamer community and 47 for the home price score.
Ranking just below the Chicagoland area in the no. 8 spot, Oakland-Hayward-Berkeley got a total score of 70.9. The metro scored an 83 for latency, 94 for download speed and 44 for gamer community — but it also tallied a 4 for home price score.
Because internet download speed is hugely important for gamers, Trulia also ranked the nation’s cities with the fastest speeds. Honolulu ranked in the no. 1 spot for the fastest download speed, which was 194.57 megabits per second. Austin-Round Rock ranked in the second place spot, with a speed of 182.73. Five California cities made the rankings, including Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco.
Trulia used information from Speedtest by Ookla to determine internet speeds. Determining the number of computer or video game based stores came from Yelp. Gamer age demographics were also calculated based on the Entertainment Software Associations 2016 Essential Facts’ gamer age demographics.
