Videogame consoles are almost owned as much as computers and tablets/mobiles in U.S. homes!
It also shows that videogame playing is actually ON THE RISE, and not falling by any stretch of the imagination. The actual number of U.S. homes that own a modern, current-generation videogame console (Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii) actually sits at 56% which is OVER half.
Young girls play videogames more commonly now than ever before. As does the whole U.S. population.
Mobile gaming is also huge these days, and the study found that the sector has given an explosive rise in videogame playing, and adding to the amount of time that people play games (surely socieal networking games like Facebook games also factor heavily into this). Ironically, the older age group of 23-34 year-olds prefer to play mobile games on the Android platform rather than Apple platforms.
Another interesting tidbit is that 65% of gaming consoles are still located in the living room as opposed to bedrooms (mine are in the bedroom…) and that online shopping for videogames has risen dramatically, causing other retail sectors for videogame sales to decline. Additionally, a huge number of people use their videogame consoles to do something other than play games, with 33% using their gaming machine to almost exclusively stream video on the Wii particularly (15% each for Xbox 360 and PS3).
Family’s playing Wii has likely increased household game playing.
Very, very interesting numbers overall. It’s crazy to think that videogames have finally broken the 50% of households barrier, that is a number higher than the amount of US households that own surround sound… And these numbers will only increase as my generation becomes the parental generation, a process that has already started.
