Nielsen: Roughly 1/4 Of Gamers Interested In New Consoles

A new Nielsen survey shows 27 percent of interviewed gamers would be interested in buying Nintendo's next console within 6 months of its release. Similar proportions of those interviewed expressed interest in purchasing new consoles from Microsoft (25 percent) or Sony (24 percent) should they be released in the next two years. The survey, conducted in the weeks before the upcoming E3 show, seems to suggest some potential interest in new hardware at this point in what many analysts are calling an extended hardware cycle. Nielsen found only 18 percent of gamers were interested in purchasing a follow-up to the recently released Nintendo 3DS, and 13 percent were interested in Sony's code-named Next Generation Portable. Interest in Nintendo's next console was relatively lower among gamers that own both a Wii and another major console, Nielsen pointed out. Among those that own a Wii and an Xbox 360, 46 percent expressed interest in buying the next Microsoft system, compared to only 37 percent who want Nintendo's next console. For those who own a Wii and PS3, 44 percent are interested in a new Sony system compared to 40 percent want the Wii successor. Nielsen's survey also found 47 percent of gamers expecting Nintendo's new console to launch in the next two years, as Nintendo has promised. A full 40 percent expect a new Microsoft console in that time frame, and 37 percent expect a new home system from Sony, despite no announced plans from either company. A Nielsen analysis of pre-E3 chatter also shows high interest in information on Nintendo's next system, with 22 percent of over 131,000 tracked online messages about the show centering on the system. For context, only 4 percent of messages measured last year involved Microsoft's Kinect.