Portable Gaming Habits Revealed

Portable devices were designed to be taken anywhere, but users' top location to use these devices is at home, according to new research by NPD Group.

The firm told Edge, "79 percent [of those polled say] they use their portable device in-home, far more than any other location."

A statement from NPD added, "[This] indicates that these devices may be competing with more stationary entertainment devices for a user’s time."

Overall, the research found that people are using devices such as the smartphone, iPhone, iPod, DS and PSP more today than they were just three months ago.

Media, texting and business applications are all fine uses for portables, but what about gaming and gaming-centric devices like DS and PSP? NPD Group shared with us specific stats from the full report:

PSP

„"Gameplay is the feature used by most (84 percent) on the PlayStation Portable. Slightly more than one third of PSP owners are watching movies (35 percent) and listening to music (33 percent) on their device. The use of these cross category features is changing the scope of this gaming device to an entertainment device."

„"Twenty five percent are listening to music more on their PlayStation Portable [compared to three months ago] and this feature also yields the highest average hours (5.8) among PlayStation Portable owners.

DS„

„"Ninety two percent of Nintendo DS owners are playing games by themselves followed by close to one quarter playing games with friends locally using one game cartridge.„"

"Nintendo DS owners are spending an average of 4.6 hours a week playing games by themselves which outweighs all other game play methods (with friends using one game cartridge, multiple game cartridges or WiFi)."

Apple

"Listening to music dominates iPod usage (96 percent) followed by playing games (20 percent) at a distant second."

"„„iPhones are being treated as entertainment devices. Thirty percent or more iPhone owners are utilizing all of the available features with the exception of watching movies (19 percent) and using business related applications (14 percent)."

"Among iPhone users specifically, the application with the greatest increase in use over the last three months was playing games."

NPD's data was collected from over 3,200 pre-identified sample owners of portable devices from September 16-23.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/port...abits-revealed