Kids Want Nintendo, Halo and Call of Duty for Christmas

A new report from the NPD Group shows that 15% of children in the United States are hoping to get either a video game or a piece of hardware for Christmas, with first-person shooters being the most requested games and Nintendo leading when it comes to console purchasing.

The Kids Industry Data Service report from the NPD Group, which also publishes monthly sales charts for the United States video game market, says that gaming is ahead of consumer electronics, book and other entertainment in the preferences of children but behind traditional toys.

22 percent of kids were interested in getting a Nintendo Wii home console or a DS handheld, with 18% interested in the Xbox 360 from Microsoft while just 8 percent named their desire as the PlayStation 3 from Sony.

Interestingly, Call of Duty: Black Ops from developer Treyarch and publisher Activision Blizzard and Halo: Reach from Bungie and Microsoft are the two most wanted-for-Christmas video games by children, despite the fact that both bear a Mature rating from the ESRB, which means that kids should not be able to pick them up on their own.

Only 6% of the kids included in the survey were interested in getting accessories, including the Kinect and Move motion tracking systems that were recently released by Sony and Microsoft.

The NPD Group suggests that the most scenario for gift giving at Christmas was based around kids voicing a request to their parents who then went on to fulfill it rather than pick up something that they believe is best suited to their children.

Christmas is traditionally the biggest single season for video game and hardware sales and children are an important audience because they have quite a lot of time they can dedicate to gaming and have a lot of control over how their parents will spend their money.