Handheld Game Consoles

by | Sep 10, 2019

Handheld Game Consoles

37.7% of respondents have never owned a handheld game console (e.g., Gameboy, Sony PSP), representing the 7th largest untapped market of any of the 16 devices studied, according to a Researchscape survey of 1,000 consumers.

Purchase Interest

16.7% of respondents were “very interested” or “extremely interested” in purchasing a handheld game console. People interested in handheld game consoles are most likely to also be interested in video game consoles (0.508 correlation), digital photo frames (0.360 correlation) and portable DVD players (0.339 correlation).

Handheld game consoles are a category that doesn’t benefit much from device substitution: only 1.9% of respondents would replace a broken device from a different category (typically, a portable DVD player, selected by 0.9%) with a handheld game console.

1.5% of respondents without a handheld game console said it was the device they didn’t own that they were most interested in purchasing. Of all respondents, 1.1% identified handheld game consoles as the device they were most interested in purchasing, the 5th lowest interest level. Respondents were interested in purchasing consoles for use during long trips, attracted to the functionality of new models or anticipating a better gaming experience than offered by cell phones.

  • For long trips (mentioned by 5 respondents):
    • “For trips and such I think it would make the trip go by much faster; long flights.”
    • “I’ve been needing something for whenever I just want to lay on my back and play some games. It’d also help for those long trips on the bus from college.”
    • “I am interested in buying some kind of handheld game console for my children to have to use on long car rides.”
  • The new models look great (mentioned by 4 respondents):
    • “[Sony PlayStation] Vita games could be cool.”
    • “I would like to try the new Nintendo 3DS and play some of the games that were made exclusively for it.”
    • “I have downtime at work and some of the new features of the 3D Gameboy seem really interesting and fun.”
    • “The 3DSXL looks amazing.”
  • Better games than on my other devices (mentioned by 3 respondents):
    • “Because iPhone games are shallow.”
    • “So I can play more interesting mobile games.”
    • “I find the games to be more interesting than the games on my other devices.”

Current Ownership

29.5% of respondents currently own a handheld game console, the 6th lowest ownership rate of the 16 devices studied.

33.9% of owners no longer use their handheld gaming console, giving it the second highest rate of lapsed usage, behind only digital photo frames. Similarly, handhelds had the fourth lowest rate of frequent use: 27.1% of owners reported using their handheld game console frequently.

In a separate survey of 400 consumers, we asked respondents a hypothetical question: which devices would they purchase if they had lost all of their devices in a robbery and new purchases were covered by insurance? 34.1% of current owners were “very interested” or “extremely interested” in repurchasing a handheld game console, the fourth lowest interest level in repurchasing.

Handheld game consoles are the fourth least valued devices: 24.3% of owners said it was the device that they were least interested in replacing if it broke.

Past Ownership

32.8% of respondents have owned a handheld game console in the past but no longer do so, the third highest rate of past ownership. This represents 52.7% of the group of current and former owners – 71% of past owners do own a video game console; past handheld owners are no more likely to own a tablet computer than other respondents.