Back in the day, our video game consoles were pretty much limited to just playing games. However as the demands and habits of consumers change, companies like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have added more features to consoles, thus allowing them to surf the web, watch videos, and chat with friends via the consoles.
This allows users to do more than just play games, and thanks to a new survey conducted by Parks Associates, it seems that gaming consoles are the device of choice when it comes to accessing non-gaming internet content. The survey asked users which of their devices do they use the most at home, and gaming consoles took the biggest slice of the pie (as you can see in the image above).
The survey involved 10,000 American homes in 2014 and found that console owners were using apps such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Video while not playing games. It was found that about 75% of gamers log into their console to watch videos at least once a week, and that 40% of them spend at least 10 hours a week watching video content.
However it should be noted that the survey was conducted before Microsoft removed the need for a Gold subscription to stream videos, although Parks has told Ars Technica that they don’t believe that the removal of the limitation has affected video usage that much.
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