I find that pretty hard to believe [that more gamers play offline than online], at least in a first world country.
You can check the breakdown of XBox 360 gold:silver:none members for clear evidence that that is indeed likely the case.
http://techland.time.com/2012/05/30...ty-at-67m-sold-this-is-why-no-new-xbox-at-e3/ = 67million XBox 360's sold. 40 million total (that is gold+silver) members. So we have no live at all = 27/67 = 40.3%.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...his-year-is-going-to-be-our-biggest-year-ever = 50% of all live accounts (again that is gold+silver) pay for gold.
That gives a rough breakdown that's in the ballpark of:
Gold = 30%
Silver = 30%
None = 40%
In other words the base ballpark figure for the number of gamers who don't game online is going to be around 70%. However there are potential confounding variables:
-Some gamers register more than one silver/gold account for themselves. This would increase the ratio of offonline gamers.
-Some gamers purchase a console and quit playing. This would inflate the ratio of silver and none accounts. However this is potentially balanced by how much spin Microsoft is using. Microsoft stated, "..Of our 25 million [Live] members, about half of them are subscribers for the business and pay us about $60 a year for that" "Subscribers for the business" is not well defined even though it's clear the implication he's trying to make. It could very well translate into "Account that has had been at gold status for at least 1 day." which would include anybody who activated one of the 3 gold trials that came with each system, for instance.
-The numbers are dated. Microsoft refuses to give clear numbers and instead prefers to randomly reveal bits and pieces of the puzzle. One article I referenced above is from mid 2012, the other in December 2010.
In general I think most confounding variables are going to end up bumping up the number of online gamers. However, I equally doubt that it's anywhere near enough to bring it up to > 50% so long as we agree that silver live subscribers are not "online gamers" as we're discussing. In any case I was genuinely interested in this topic and these numbers are what I was able to dig up. If somebody could find more recent reveals where the meaning of the words used is clear/unambiguous/trustworthy, we could try to get a more up to date picture.