The NPD Group released some interesting results to Edge regarding where gamers use their portable systems the most. 79% of the people polled claimed they use their portable systems at home far more than they do elsewhere. This is something I myself can admit to doing, as various factors lead me to playing my PSP and DS in my home instead of taking it with me when going to work and such.

When you live in London, walking around with a PSP or a DS is worrying to say the least. Also, though the systems are portable, developers tend to create games that require too much concentration to actually play on the move. Take Elite Beat Agents on the DS for example; is that something you can play properly while on the move? No, you’d need to set it down if you plan to get anywhere near a decent score. This is why I tend to take games like Lumines and turn-based strategy like Disgaea with me when I go out, they’re easy to keep up with as you get on a bus or a customer comes in to the place where you work.

The NPD Group also explained the habits of these gamers, showing which features they used most on their systems. It’s pretty interesting stuff, and I’m surprised so many DS owners play games solo when there are loads of WiFi compatible games out there. Below is a chunk from the Edge article explaining these habits in detail.

PSP

„”Gameplay is the feature used by most (84 percent) on the PlayStation Portable. Slightly more than one third of PSP owners are watching movies (35 percent) and listening to music (33 percent) on their device. The use of these cross category features is changing the scope of this gaming device to an entertainment device.”

„”Twenty five percent are listening to music more on their PlayStation Portable [compared to three months ago] and this feature also yields the highest average hours (5.8) among PlayStation Portable owners.

DS„

„”Ninety two percent of Nintendo DS owners are playing games by themselves followed by close to one quarter playing games with friends locally using one game cartridge.„”

“Nintendo DS owners are spending an average of 4.6 hours a week playing games by themselves which outweighs all other game play methods (with friends using one game cartridge, multiple game cartridges or WiFi).”

Apple

“Listening to music dominates iPod usage (96 percent) followed by playing games (20 percent) at a distant second.”

“„„iPhones are being treated as entertainment devices. Thirty percent or more iPhone owners are utilizing all of the available features with the exception of watching movies (19 percent) and using business related applications (14 percent).”

“Among iPhone users specifically, the application with the greatest increase in use over the last three months was playing games.”