Survey: Wii Leads Living Room Marketshare, Xbox 360 Wins The Bedroom

The current generation of home consoles has built itself in large part on the image of a family in the living room playing together -- and Nielsen finds that half of America's consoles reside in the living room, with the Wii the most likely hardware to be found in front of the household's main TV. The Wii can be found in 59 percent of living rooms that have game consoles, the research firm finds in a new survey, calling it a "reflection of the Nintendo console's motion-controlled, social gaming style." At 52 and 45 percent, respectively, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are less likely to be placed in living rooms, despite their comparatively greater multimedia functionalities relative to the Wii. Nielsen says it expects to see a marketshare shift, however, as motion control systems like Kinect and Move that encourage multiple participants gain more market penetration. The second-most popular location for video game consoles is the bedroom; only one in five systems is in a child's bedroom specifically, Nielsen says. The Xbox 360 leads in bedroom marketshare among kids -- at 28 percent, it has nearly double that of Wii (14 percent) and PS3 (16 percent). 7 percent of people keep a console in the basement. "The master bedroom is home to another 10 percent of 7th Gen systems, with a number of other household locations accounting for the balance of platforms," the report concludes.