Nielsen survey says most PSP users are female, Xbox 360 most played

In its 2010 Media Industry Fact Sheet, the Nielsen Company tallied some interesting numbers [PDF] related to the increase of social media and how video game console usage trended in 2009. According to its survey statistics, Sony's PSP market in the United States contains a slight majority of female gamers -- 52% of the platform's owners in the region, while 49% of Nintendo Wii owners are female. Nielsen's survey statistics show that, as of 2009, 45% of all active gamers are women.

Social media has, expectantly, made a dramatic leap in usage. Nielsen's survey claims Facebook membership skyrocketing from November 2008 to 2009 with 109 million members accessing the site at the end of the the decade versus about 47.5 million the year before. Twitter saw its user base increase by 15.9 million members in the same time frame. Both social media sites have seen life on consoles.

Related to each console's individual usage -- besides what the good looking gamers enjoy -- Nielsen's survey claims the Xbox 360 is the most played console (ranked by share of total usage minutes), taking 23.1% of the measured playtime. Sony's PlayStation 2 netted second with 20.4% and the Nintendo Wii closed up the top three with 19% of the vote. While we know the previous sentence sounds like we just called all console gamers hideous beings, we just mean that ladies are pretty and smell like daffodils compared to the faint odor of Cheetos and Mountain Dew that lingers around us fellas.

[Via Edge]