14 DAY TRIAL // The Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing has issued a new report detailing the degree to which Americans have adopted a wide array of gadgets and information technologies and there are some interesting implications for gamers in the data offered.
Straight up, the report says that 40% of American households have a video game system. The Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing does not state what it qualifies as a video games system or how many of them see regular play time from their owners.
Meanwhile, 71% of households have a PC and one could surmise that most of them can run casual games or browser-based games, which is quite good news for companies like PopCap and web-based free-to-play titles like Free Realms and Battlefield Heroes.
But the big gaming-related news brought about by the report is the fact that both large screen TVs and HDTVs are seeing an increase despite the recession and their comparatively high cost. The biggest rise is for HDTV sets, which went for 35% to 53%, meaning that consoles offering HDTV gaming benefit from a wider array of potential costumers.
One question arising is how many potential gamers know the distinction between big screen and HDTV and how many of them use the special connections allowing consoles to show off the graphics quality they can deliver. There's also the question of why the Nintendo Wii is still seeing the biggest console sales in the United States while HDTVs are favoring the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.
The importance of the HDTV could come into play as more and more games are delivered with special effects that can only be enjoyed in their full glory on them, like Ubisoft is planning to do with the upcoming Avatar: The Video Game.