Viewers watch more streaming on game consoles
December 15, 2011
Increasingly, people are using their Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles to stream movies and TV shows, according to a survey released by the Nielsen Co.
Because all three consoles readily connect to the Internet, viewers can use them to access VoD services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube and ESPN to watch on their TV screens rather than on small computer monitors.
And that seems to be just what consumers are doing. Streaming video accounted for 14 per cent of the average time spent using Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in October, up from 10 per cent a year earlier, according to the survey of 3,000 people.
For Sony ‘s PS3, the share of streaming video was 15 per cent this year, up from 9 per cent last year. The shift was even more dramatic for Nintendo’s Wii, which jumped to 33 per cent from 20 per cent.
Xbox and PlayStation users also spent an additional 5 per cent of their time watching movies and television shows they paid to download, an option not available on the Wii.
Two of the consoles are also popular as DVD players. People spend 15 per cent of their time on PS3s watching DVDs or Blu-ray discs. Sony’s device is the only console that plays Blu-ray discs and is the best-selling Blu-ray player on the market. Xbox 360 users spend 9 per cent of their time watching DVDs. The Wii does not play movies on discs.