PSP World

Young Girls, Older Women Prefer the Wii

The Nielsen company has released a report on the video game playing habits of different demographics, gathered from thousands of American households during the last 3 months of 2008. The results of the survey are somewhat surprising, and they offer answers to age old questions such as: which console do girls prefer? And, is that 12-year-old foul mouthed kid on Xbox live really representative of Xbox fanboys?

When it comes down to gender, the Nielsen report offers some startling conclusions. It found, predictably, that young girls flock toward the Wii, while young boys tend to prefer the Xbox 360. Girls aged 18 and under spent more time playing the Wii than any other console. Interestingly, however, females over the age of 18 divided their time equally between the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, suggesting that those consoles have appeal outside of the traditional young male demographic. Women over the age of 34 tend to skew back towards the Wii in increasing numbers.

The report also provided some additional fuel for the ever-raging console wars. When it comes down to the question of whether the Xbox 360 or PS3 is more popular, it really all depends on the age group being surveyed. It turns out that the Xbox 360 is consistently more popular with the male teen (12-18) demographic than the PS3. For the 18-34 age group, however, this trend is reversed. It seems that the blu-ray equipped PS3 really does attract an older, more affluent audience after all.

A spokesperson for the Nielsen Company remained diplomatic as always, saying "All three of the consoles have their fans, and sales of consoles and games have been some of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak retail environment. It will be interesting to watch the continued migration to the current generation consoles in 2009, and see how releases of titles such as Halo Wars, Resident Evil 5, MadWorld, Killzone 2 and Street Fighter IV impact usage trends in the first half of the year."

It will be very interesting to see how certain publishers' new strategy of targeting traditional "core" gamers on the Wii could influence these usage patterns. Perhaps Microsoft has more to fear from the family-friendly Wii console than we thought.

[Source: Nielsen Report]