As if we needed the clarification, but Nielsen has once again proved the popular theory that the Wii simply isn't geared towards gamers, but rather…everyone else.
According to Nielsen's State of the Video Gamer study (yeah, that's the actual title), Wii owners use their console far less than PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 owners. Edge reported on the study, which showed that those who have a Wii only used it 6.8% of the time they could've been using it. We assume the study measures a participant's free time, and then, how much of that free time they spend playing on their video game system. This is in stark contrast to the PS3's "Active User Percentage" of 10.6% and the Xbox 360's percentage of 10.2%. The Wii was also trailed all other machines – save the GameCube – in the "average usage days" category; it only tallied about 5. The PS3 and 360 were used 6.8 and 7.1 days on average, respectively. Nielsen also looked at the average number of play sessions on any given day, and the Wii was behind here as well, coming in at about 1.78 sessions, as opposed to 2.42 for the PS3 and 2.15 for the 360. Obviously, one must also note that the multimedia capabilities of the PS3 and 360 means people would probably use it more than the Wii for a variety of purposes. But the results are hardly surprising, and further disproves any remaining archaic beliefs that the the PS3 "has no games."
We could also add that most of the Wii games aren't exactly titles you spend a great deal of time with, and are often best suited for multiplayer. You can't always have a bunch of friends around to play, and given the stale software selection, you probably have no crazy urge to play many new titles. Just a possible theory to explain the stats, that's all.
