Nielsen chart shows how people use game consoles

Game fanatic and addict? How is it that you spend your time on your game console? Well, the Nielsen market research firm has come up with this chart that shows how people use game consoles. What’s interesting is that the way game consoles are used differs from console to console. As one can see in the image below, the survey results involve the three major game consoles: the Xbox 360 coming from Microsoft, Wii coming from Nintendo as well as Sony’s PlayStation 3.

It’s easy to notice that people spend little time watching video on-demand and using streaming services. Thus, the percentage of the time spent using the consoles this way point to 15% on PlayStation and 14% on Microsoft’s Xbox 360. This only means that more work needs to be done regarding the video streaming on the two consoles. The survey was based on a sample of 3,000 people in United States at the end of last year when Xbox Live wasn’t out and about yet.

According to this chart, there was a decrease in the online gaming usage on PlayStation 3 and Wii from 2010 to 2011. In the case of PlayStation, the culprit might be the extended outage of the PlayStation in 2011. The online platforms of the two game consoles should be home to growth and evolution if these numbers are to be changed.

After adding Netflix in 2010, Nintendo has increased its video streaming usage on its Wii. Only 20% of the time spent on the console was dedicated to video streaming in 2010. This changed in 2011 when users spent 33% of their time using the game console for video streaming.

It’s obvious that the main reason we use game consoles is to enter the real of our favorite games. The numbers show that. The second main reason game consoles are used is watching shows. Listening to music or browsing the Internet is still not that much fun when it comes to consoles. However, improvements in this matter might change things considerably. Time will tell!