According to research done by Newzoo, half of the adult population of Germany plays videogames on a regular basis. The same applies to France and the United Kingdom, as all three countries combined have a total market of 153 million people who play on PCs, consoles, mobile platforms and on social websites like Facebook.
Germany is the most important market of the EU with a volume of €4.6 billion ($6.5 billion) and 24 million gamers, followed by the U.K. with €4.1 billion ($5.8 billion) and about 16 million gamers. Last but not least, there's France with a volume of €3.2 billion ($4.5 billion) and 10,4 million gamers. Additionally, 63% of the men play videogames and 54% of the women now enjoy videogames.
Altogether, it is quite an impressive market, where a lot of money can be made. Now, if only someone could explain to me why we're getting shafted so often when it comes to localizations! The EU gets games later then the U.S. (if at all) on a regular basis!
Making Games News-Flash – Über die Hälfte der volljährigen Deutschen spielt regelmässig Videospiele (Gamestar.de)
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9:00 PM on 08.11.2011 | 
Not sure what MOST of them play, but I'm fairly convinced the most hardcore of them play Counter-Strike.
At least, in my experience of playing CS, I knew to stay the hell away from the German servers if I wanted more than a squirrel's fart of a chance.
People on the internet love to make little dramatics about the German government censoring and banning don't they? Most of the time it's nothing of the sort.
http://mag-murphy.net/2008-10-29/video-game-censorship-in-germany-how-it-works-how-it-doesnt
1.Consumers spent $25.1 billion on video games, hardware and accessories in 2010.
Larger market wins in the end.
For example: It says you can buy L4D as an 18+ rating and the cover-censor was done by EA.
But what about the game itself being censored like hell with no blood whatsoever? That was done by EA after the USK denied an 18+ rating. Since they want to sell the game here, they censored it.
Or Dead Island. It is already known that the game will NOT be released in Germany at all because the publisher doesn't want to censor it.
It is right, we get a lot of games Australia didn't even get, but even when the games are 18+, 50% of the time they also get censored. Which doesn't make any sense because it is already ONLY FOR ADULTS 18+!
To simultaniously release a game on a worldwide scale would either mean holding back the release of an otherwise finished version of the game until all localizations are done or longer development cycles due to a split of manpower in order to finish all versions at roughly the same time.
Either way, most developers don't have the resources to delay a game or split manpower in order to release it worldwide at the same time.
Localization often is a far bigger task than a simple translation into the regional language and the rating/approval process here in Germany (don't know about other countries) can take month.
@Lazyman: Don't know the recent figures but in 2008 the EU video game market was even slightly larger than NA market. I doubt that that's the main reason.
You make valid points, yet many big publishers have no problem at all releasing their localized versions really close to the U.S. ones. That is not the case with Nintendo and some other publishers though.
There are not 153 million gamers in Germany, UK and France (Hell, there are only 200 million living there :D)
That would mean, basically, that 75% of the whole population in those countries would be 1.)adults and 2.) playing. Well, you do the math ;)
The real number is somewhere around 50 million gamers in those three countries combined.
According to the source's comments they did that research in 10 different countries, including US and so on, that's where the 153 million come from.