Nielsen: Average American Spends 13 Minutes Playing Video Games on the Television

A study coming from Nielsen that tracks how the average United States consumer uses the television set in the home has found that the median adult spends about 13 minutes every day playing video games on the device.

The new report is called “State of the Media: U.S. TV Trends by Ethnicity” and is based on information that was collected in November 2010 from a sample of the United States population aged between 18 and 49, the population group that is the most active and attractive to advertisers.

The average American was found to spend 5 hours and 11 minutes in front of the television set on a normal day, with gaming getting just 4 percent of this time.

African Americans were found to game a bit more than other groups, with 16 minutes spent playing video games, while those who identified themselves as Asians coming below the average number, with just 9 minutes linked to gaming.

Hispanics are said to spend 10 minutes each day on average using their TV set to play video games.

Time spent gaming is pretty close to the amount of TV space reserved for DVD watching, which comes in at 15 minutes on average.

The TV is still mainly used to watch news and shows, with more than 4 hours each day dedicated to actual television watching.

Both Microsoft and Sony are aiming to attract this television watching crowd to the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 by offering a selection of television shows on their home consoles.

Microsoft is even rumored to be in talks with a number of content providers, with the aim being of launching a new channel on the Xbox 360 that will offer some of the best television shows around via streaming.

It was also revealed that Microsoft tried to sign Conan O'Brien to do an Xbox Live exclusive show after he lost his Tonight Show spot.