The NPD has released a report that has a couple of interesting findings, one being that there are now more internet connect devices in the country than there are people (315 million to 425 million). And the second is, that gaming consoles are the third most internet connected device in North America. Overall there are 425 million connect devices in the United States and of those 39 million of them are gaming consoles.
The only two more connect devices are desktops/laptops with 183.8 million and smartphones 133 million. Tablets come in fourth registering 31.8 million internet connect devices. Although tablets should probably fall under gaming as well considering it was discovered that most people use tablets for gaming anyways.
To me this data just confirms that gaming is still becoming one of the most encompassing forms of entertainment in our society. At this point you almost need a gaming console in your house; mostly for streaming purposes (Netflix). On top of that, there is a chance that we could see four new consoles in houses this year: Steambox, new Xbox, new PlayStation, and Ouya. In other words, by the end of this year we could see some significant growth in the 39 million internet connect consoles.
Source: Games Industry International
