Nielsen Ratings and Console Markets

While I tend to pay attention to consoles a bit more than the PC (and sometimes unduly, though I've been attempting to rectify that to some extent lately), in part that is because the console while becoming more widespread as these reports indicate, it also tends to be the cash cow of the video game industry, and as such is the platform that video game companies strive to work on.

More and more reports indicate that gamers are favoring consoles over PC's, and that in many cases PC's are being used to drive a fairly narrow set of games. However, at the same time I'm interested more and more in the PC because it is the only "open" game development system out there at the moment capable of running the kinds of games that consumers have come to expect.

The comment about game systems being multimedia hubs is interesting, because for me that makes it a bit complicated that Nintendo released the Wii in the United States unable to play DVD's, despite the systems capability of actually doing so. I'm curious if this is a licensing issue or some other piece of the industry puzzle.

Nielsen reports surge in US console ownership

"The video game console has become a major player in the battle for the living room," according to Nielsen's vice president of wireless and interactive services, Jeff Herrmann. "In households across the country, consoles are successfully competing for consumers' time and attention; not simply as gaming platforms, but as multimedia hubs that also can deliver high quality digital movies and IPTV."

Nielsen: 41.1% of TV Households Have Consoles

According to Nielsen Wireless and Interactive Services, the number of game consoles in U.S. households with a television has grown by 18.5%. In total, there were 45.7 million homes with video game consoles, representing 41.1% of all TV households, during the fourth quarter of 2006. This is an increase from 43 million households (39.1%) last year and 38.6 million (35.2%) in 2004.