Americans still use their game consoles mostly for playing video games, but video on-demand (VOD) and streaming services are capturing more of console usage time, per new data from Nielsen. VOD and streaming services accounted for 22% of overall time spent with 7th-generation consoles (such as PlayStation3, Wii, Xbox 360) last year, up from 19% in 2011 and 13% in 2010. In fact Wii users devoted 32% of their time to VOD and streaming. PS 3 users, though, are gravitating most rapidly to these services, spending 24% of their console time last year on them, up from 15% in 2011.
Recent figures from FreeWheel indicate that a growing proportion of professionally-produced online video views are occurring on non-PC/Mac devices, with the Xbox accounting for 8% of those non-PC/Mac views.
Meanwhile, the Nielsen data suggests that gaming consoles are being used for multiple activities aside from just gaming. For example, PS3 users devoted 22% of their console time to watching DVDs/blu-rays (18%) and downloaded movies and TV shows (4%), while also spending 8% of their time on other activities such as listening to music and using the internet. In fact, just 28% of PS3 time was spent playing video games offline (down from 38% in 2012), while 18% of time was spent playing video games online.
In January, Nielsen reported that 56% of American TV homes owned a video game console as of September 2012.
About the Data: The Nielsen data is based on a survey of 2,500+ general population consumers (including game console users) in the US conducted in October 2011 and October 2012.
