Gaming: Nintendo Wii the winning console among students

Students’ gaming habits, as found in The Student Room tech’ survey, demonstrate that Nintendo Wii is the favourite console, and that once again their purchasing habits are driven by peer reviewfollowed by performance, reliability and price.

Consoles

Among student gamers, Nintendo comes out as the top brand for consoles with the Wii taking over two fifths of the votes, almost twice the responses for the Xbox 360.

• 41.6% have a Nintendo Wii
• 22% have an Xbox 360

Interestingly, marginally more students own a gaming laptop than have the latest console from high-profile brand, Sony Playstation, closely followed by users opting for a gaming PC.

• 17.1% have a gaming latop
• 16.8% have a Playstation 3
• 15.4% have a gaming PC

The majority of students that own the leading brands do not have the respective add-ons for their consoles.

• 72.4% don’t have a gaming add-on like Xbox Live, Playstation Move or Xbox Kinect

Social Net-Marketing

In addition to for their mobile and computer research, students also look to The Student Room over other leading social networking sites for their gaming needs, once again citing the same criteria as important when making their product selection.

• Students are marginally more likely to use The Student Room (11.6%) than Facebook (9.6%) when making a purchase decision for a gaming device
• Performance, reliability and price are again the most important factors when making a purchase decision

Play time

Gaming times varied between online and offline activity, with over 10% less spending 1-5 hours a week playing computer games online than offline.

• 38.9% play computer games for between 1-5 hours a week
• 29.8% play computer games online for between 1-5 hours a week

As with their computer preferences, despite the popularity of and advances in modern games consoles, some students still prefer more traditional modes of play on their laptop or computer. Moreover, the majority of those that do purchase the purpose-built consoles are not interested in buying into gaming add-ons, perhaps satisfied with the performance and reliability of the high quality consoles, and not interested in the additional cost.

Findings taken from The Student Room technology survey of 297 students