This really is completely pointless information for us poor SA gamers but it does bring to light why the main guys ignore most other countries apart from the US and Japan.

New research by Nielson has found that 41.1% of American households have a game console which works out to a staggering 45.7 million houses. Which is more than the entire population of SA. To make it even more staggering this actually works out to 148.4 million Americans who can sit down and play games every night…. That is 3 1/2 times our entire population…

Scary……

45.7 million U.S. households have at least one game system, out of 111.4 million that have TVs (41.1%). This number has risen from 38.6 million (35.2%) in late 2004.

148.4 million Americans have access to a console in their home, out of 283.5 million that have access to TVs (52.4%). Of those, 93.8 million Americans (33.3% of the TV population) actually used a console in the 4th quarter of 2006.

The top 20% of gamers are responsible for 75% of the console time, averaging 5 hours and 45 minutes of use per day.

Source: Nielsen: One-third of TV owners play game consoles – Joystiq