Study: PS3 has highest percentage of online systems in U.S.

by Justin McElroy on Apr 13th 2010 1:00PM

According to data collected by The Diffusion Group, there's one area of the console wars in which the PS3 has a notable lead: The percentage of users online in the U.S. According to the numbers posted by Gamasutra, 78 percent of PS3 owners have taken their consoles online, compared to 73 percent of Xbox 360 owners.

By comparison, only 54 percent of Wiis have been connected to the internet, which means that 46 percent of our nation's nephews are failing to return their Aunt Cathy's calls. (By the way, Dylan, would you just help her already? It would take you five minutes. Please, just help her.)

Source

Tags: console-wars, Nintendo, online, psn, Wii, xbox-live

Reader Comments (170)

Nearly all consoles have Wi-Fi. PSN is free.

This is by no means a surprising result.

This is similar to the comparisons of sales at exclusive vs multi-platform. Since PSN is free of course it's percentages will be higher.

Keyword is "Nearly". PS3 and Wii have built-in Wi-Fi, so its less of a hassle to connect those to the net. 360, not so much, either you spend 70-100 dollars or you deal with wires. And yes, PSN being free helps too...
IMO, the Wii is so low because its more of a party games console, to play with local friends and not online.

Friend Codes!!!!

I deal with wires. I have an Ethernet cable running across my living room floor because I can't bring myself to spend that much on a wireless adapter. Especially after I just bought one for my PC at $30.

Is Xbox360 still leading PS3 in sales? If so 5% could mean Xbox360 still has more users online...

I was going to recommend the Pelican 360 Wireless Networking Adapter, but that sucker's gone up to 55 used.

Just buy a cheaper bridge and connect it over Ethernet.

It falls in line with every other piece of hardware they force you to buy at expensive prices. First we were told by greenberg that the 250 GB HDD was unneeded, that it was only for a bundle release. Then all of a sudden the 250 GB is announced at $130 and the 120 GB reduced to $100 and phasing out. They'd make much more money if they reduced their prices to be able to sell more. I keep waiting for deals or price drops until I buy hardware for the 360.

"[E]ither you spend 70-100 dollars or you deal with wires."

NOOOOOOOOOOO! NOT WIRES!

/drops to ground, clutches head with hands, emits anguished scream

I know alot of people also who steal their neighbors' internet since PS has wi-fi.

By the numbers, NA:

54% of 32.77 Million Wii consoles = 17.70 Million connected
73% of 22.75 Million 360 consoles = 16.61 Million connected
78% of 13.56 Million PS3 consoles = 10.58 Million connected

Call me old fashioned, but I connect my PS3 to the internet with a Ethernet cable, and the Wii's lack of Ethernet really disappoints me more than a lack of Wifi would. You just can't beat Ethernet for reliability, latency, and speed.

@spencer8ab

I too connect my PS3 (and 360) with a hard wire for the reasons you mention. My router and cable modem sit behind my TV. Clean, unobtrusive.

Yea I personally use my PS3 online these days more than anything else so this figure doesn't surprise me. I'm not gonna be paying for XBLA anymore once it runs out with PSN being quite good now.

Sidenote I plug my PS3 in wired 1.) Because it's 2 feet from my router and 2.) wired is way more reliable than wireless...

So more Wii users are online?
Even has a primairly Wii user that shocks me.

wireless is necessary for me since my modem is downstairs and running a cable across 4 or 5 rooms would be horribly impractical. that's why i appreciate the PS3's built in wifi. that's also why i figure in an extra $100 whenever i consider purchasing the 360.

I just turned my router off, turned on the PS3 - proceeded to play a game of Wip3out (one is never enough, okay a few races) then played some Super Stardust.

Not required to be signed in to play these two.

This also includes online psn accounts...... lol

I think he/she was making a joke about how Sony counts their online forum accounts as PSN accounts.

Keep in mind that in order to play some single player games on the PS3 you have to connect to PSN, where as this is not the case with the XBOX and Wii.

what games are those?

Yeah...unless you're thinking Warhawk, which is multiplayer.

Well, you mean games you download from the PSN. So I am not sure if this is a good point, since you have to connect to the internet at some point, with a 360 or Wii, to buy a game from the internet on those consoles too.

However, I do think it's extremely lame that you have to connect a PS3 to the internet to play most good PS Store downloaded games. I was without my connection for a few months, and I lost games I paid good money for.

I guess this is what it takes to beat down piracy, but it's a valid point. Do you not need to log into the 360's live to play live games? I would think MS's drm would be strong too. I can vouch that you don't on Nintendo.

I would also like to know what games you are referring to. I have never been forced to be online to play a single player game.

@Gimboa

Yeah most of the time the 360 has to be connected. After a certain amount of time, and sometimes right away, it will put your arcade titles as trial games.

"What games are these"

He's not making it up. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and several other single player games, if bought from the store online, have to be logged into the PSN to play. That's a problem if your internet situation isn't the ideal.

Try disconnecting your PS3 from the internet and playing all your downloaded PS3 games.

Not even PSN games you need to be online.

He doesn't know what he's talking about.

That is not true at all, except for ONLINE GAMES ONLY.

Re: single player games need to be online: No.

Evil Bastard claims this 'you gotta log in sometimes' isn't the case on the Xbox, which I guess outs him as making a bit of a fanboy point that isn't actually true.

It's also irrelevant to the ultimate point, since if we're talking about downloaded content, 100% of the systems on all consoles had to connect to the internet to be connected to the internet stores. It's lame on all systems, even if there's no points to be had in the console war for either side.

I've got over 12 PSN titles, and I don't think I've ever seen a single one (other than Warhawk which is online-only multiplayer) which doesn't work when I'm offline.

Perhaps people have have this problem simply haven't activated their consoles on PSN yet? I know there's a separate section of the PS3 which lets you "activate" either "games" or "video" for a particular console. Normally this is done automatically, but I got a replacement console back from Sony Support once and it hadn't yet been activated for "video" so the rental I had just downloaded refused to play till I "activated the console". Never had that happen for games, though.

I've heard 360 users are required to be logged into Live to use their downloaded stuff until they get their original licenses moved to their new consoles. Maybe that's why they're thinking PS3 has to, as well. But I've never needed to do anything like this for my PS3.

"Online Games Only"

I am not sure what this means. If you mean only games downloaded from the store (And only some of those), then yeah, online only. If you mean disc based games don't have to connect, well, that's just obvious and no one was bringing that up.

It is a valid complaint, though, that when your internet is down and you want to play some of the single player games you downloaded from the store, some of them won't work. Even though it's not a complaint that advantages wither the 360 or PS3, and a lot of kids don't care about things that aren't points in their little war, it is a valid issue to discuss.

"Perhaps people have have this problem simply haven't activated their consoles on PSN yet? I know there's a separate section of the PS3 which lets you "activate" either "games" or "video" for a particular console. Normally this is done automatically, but I got a replacement console back from Sony Support once and it hadn't yet been activated for "video" so the rental I had just downloaded refused to play till I "activated the console". Never had that happen for games, though."

No, Mike, you're incorrect. You either haven't attempted to play games that require you to be logged in, or you don't own any of them. This is a well documented policy Sony has for the management of digital rights.

I'm curious, which games are we talking about here? Which ones require you to be online?

I keep seeing Sony but only seen MS once or twice....fact is BOTH the PS3 AND 360 have games that require you to connect to the internet to use them....

@Spike Spiegel:

That sort-of-true -- I assume you've had your console replaced since some of those games were installed?

Downloadable content associates itself with both the console's serial number and your Live ID. If you try to play it on a console with a different serial number, it will require that you log on to XBox Live to access the full version. If you play on your native console, you do not need to be online at all once the content is downloaded.

If you're having this problem, you can go to XBox360.com and transfer your licenses to the new serial number. I've had to do this twice -- once after the red ring, and once after upgrading to an Elite.

Make SURE you get the right serial number. You can only do the license transfer once a year. Then you have to go into your download history and 'redownload' the licenses.

@Greyseal

Must be the case. I replaced my console but did the license transfer. It doesn't happen often but every great once in a while if my internet's down some games revert to trials. Can only do the licensing once every 12 months too.

How would you get the downloadable games if you didn't have online to begin with? Stupid claim is stupid. To add fuel to the fire, not every PS3 owner has or plays games that require online in order to play, so I think that point accounts for not much.

The only offline game that I can think of that requires you to be logged on PSN is GT5 Prologue if you bought the game off the PSN store.

Citizen, there are at least several more like that. Wipeout is one for sure. Is Megaman? I think it is too, but I'm not near my console.

There are more than a couple of them, and if your PS3 is always logging in, you probably just didn't notice. It was insanely frustrating when my connection went down, and when the PSN went down for a day a while back.

OF course, the 360 is the same, but this is a lame policy all around.

Gimboa, I know for a fact that Wipeout doesn't need you to be online to play it. I've been without internet connection to my PS3 for a good 3/4 months at one point and I was still able to play Wipeout.

Hell I just started Wipeout right now and disconnected the Ethernet cable and made sure my Router was off, and it works fine.

It makes me happy to spam a troll's inbox. :)

This leaves me wondering about a comparison of the average amount of time spent online per console user and the most common activities.

Too bad their web browser stinks. They really need to upgrade it.

uhhhh would you rather have no browser at all?

hell at least its one there, if you dont like it you can always install Linux and use firef...

oh wait...

Well, it's better than nothing.

Too bad your xbox360 don't have a browser. Heck, even the Wii has a browser.

My PS3's browers rocks Pandora perfectly. What does the 360's browser do? oh wait...

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Study: PS3 has highest percentage of online systems in U.S.

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