Gameplay still king: Only 40% of PS3 owners aware of Blu-ray. Only 30% of Xbox 360 owners aware of HD graphics.

14 August 2007

Posted by:Ferry

The NPD Group released results from their “Next Gen Functionality & Usage” report and the results are, to say the least, surprising. With both Sony pushing the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft pushing the Xbox 360 as media centers / video game consoles with high-definition visuals, you’d think more people would be aware. But if you do, you’d be wrong!

According to the results, only 40% of PlayStation 3 owners polled were aware the machine had a Blu-ray player and about 50% of that number had popped in a Blu-ray movie during the last 10 times they turned on the machine — the other half didn’t use the feature. The study didn’t poll about Xbox 360′s HD-DVD add-on, as it’s not a standard feature with the Xbox 360 SKU. For reference, about half polled knew about the DVD-playback potential of Xbox 360.

The lack of awareness (or interest) isn’t limited to movie watching, either — and here’s where you should start paying attention for an idea on how the mass market will respond in the next few years. Only 30% of Xbox 360 owners were aware of the HD graphics capabilities of the machine, whereas that number rises to 50% with PS3. Considering the inclusion of a cheap Blu-ray player in the PS3, that’s not so surprising, but, either way, a startling number of “HD gamers” don’t know about — or don’t care about — HD.

“The industry is still in its infancy with regard to this “next-gen” and all the expanded capabilities of the systems,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier to 1UP. “Gameplay is still king, and it may take awhile for the awareness and usage of the additional features to really take hold with consumers.”

Here’s the NPD Methodology they used:
The report is based on online survey responses from 6,260 members of NPD’s online consumer panel. These respondents, compromised of males and females ages 6 to 44, are qualified owners of at least one next generation system (PS3, PSP, Wii, NDS, Xbox 360). In addition, non-owners were captured in order to further probe on next generation system purchase intent and other areas. Fieldwork was conducted from April 4-10, 2007.

Categories: News

pixelsword

That never mapped out for the blu-ray; if only 40% of the people are aware of blu-ray, and there’s a smaller percentage of standalone blu-rays our there, then why is the HD-DVD getting whipped in sales so bad concerning movie sales?
Reeteshinator

So that means that there are more people who bought PS3 for the games rather as a cheap blu ray player
Venom

your right Reersh.

But still PS3 is getting whipped in sales by the Wii and 360.