Game consoles no longer just for gaming!

So says the Nielsen Co., which surveyed U.S. gamers 13 and up and found that Xbox 360 owners spent 62 percent of their time playing games, both online and offline, leaving 42 percent of their Xbox use for activities like watching on-demand videos, playing DVDs, and checking their Facebook and Twitter feeds. Wii gamers spent […]

So says the Nielsen Co., which surveyed U.S. gamers 13 and up and found that Xbox 360 owners spent 62 percent of their time playing games, both online and offline, leaving 42 percent of their Xbox use for activities like watching on-demand videos, playing DVDs, and checking their Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Wii gamers spent a larger chuck of their console time gaming: 69 percent, to be exact, with the lion’s share of gaming happening offline. That said, of the 31 percent of the time Wii users weren’t gaming on their systems, 20 percent of it was devoted to on-demand videos from Netflix — more than double the on-demand viewing in which Xbox and PS3 users indulged.

Speaking of the PS3, the Sony console turns out to be the most well-rounded in terms of overall use, according to Nielsen, with PlayStation 3 users gaming on their systems only about 49 percent of the time — meaning that the majority of their time their consoles are fired up, they’re doing something other than blowing away baddies in Call of Duty or hugging the curves in Gran Turismo 5.

So, how are PS3 users whiling away their non-gaming hours? You guessed it: watching Blu-rays, with PS3 owners devoting a full 27 percent of their console time playing Blu-ray discs, just a few percentage points shy of the chunk of time they spend playing offline games (30 percent).

Wii gamers, meanwhile, don’t watch any DVDs on their consoles at all — not a huge shock, given that the Wii still can’t handle DVD playback (not without a little hacking, anyway). That probably accounts for all the time Wii users spend streaming movies and TV shows via Netflix (20 percent, as noted above).

Game-console owners aren’t just gaming and streaming, of course. They’re also listening to music (4 to 5 percent for both the Xbox 360 and PS3, or 2 percent for the Wii), watching shows and movies they’ve downloaded (between 4 and 6 percent of the time for the Xbox and PS3), or browsing the Web, tweeting, or oversharing on Facebook (6 percent of use for the Wii, between 4 and 5 percent on the Xbox and PS3).

While the various usage “profiles” of each console differs depending on their relative strength and weaknesses, Nielsen gives the crown for most-used gaming system to the Xbox 360, which gets about 4.9 hours of use a week by its average owner (or 6.1 hours a week for guys 13 and older, 2.6 weekly hours for women). Up next is the PS3, which saw an average of 5.2 hours of weekly activity. Dead last: the Wii, with a mere 1.7 hours of use each week.

Nielsen’s revelation that gamers are using their consoles for a variety of purposes other than gaming isn’t much of a shock, of course — but the figures do underline the fact that systems like the PS3, the Xbox 360 and Wii pack in amazing value for the dollar.

If I had to choose just one console, well … I rather wouldn’t, and I haven’t — I own both, in fact, and I pretty much split my time between them (the PS3 more for Blu-ray, the Xbox for Halo-type shooters and now, Kinect). As for the Wii, sorry — it’s not my thing. So, how often are you using your game console — and what are you using it for? Mostly games, or more for other activities?

Yahoo! Tech