Nielsen: 52% of US PSP Owners Are Female

It looks like PSPz just might be for girlz after all.

Remember how we mercilessly mocked the “OMG Girlz Play Games Too!” ad campaign for the PSP? Well, it turns out that even though the ad campaign was still really, really awkward and dumb, there may have been some truth in it: Demographics research giant Nielsen Media Research found that 52% of all PSP owners in the United States were female.

It’s an interesting statistic, and not one all that vulnerable to the counterpoint oft-used by people who don’t know what they’re talking about when faced with similarly high numbers on, say, the DS – Oh, girls only like it for cute games like Nintendogs! The PSP is traditionally seen as more of a “hardcore” gaming machine than its Nintendo-made rival, particularly since the UMD movie scene is pretty dead at this point.

Incidentally, the Wii has a 49% female owner-base in the United States, Nielsen found, while 44% of “active gamers” (users who play at least one hour per week) were also female. This may not be surprising given the increasing prevalence of gaming devices in the States: Nielsen’s numbers also show that 79% of US households have “a device they specifically use for gaming,” and 54% own a handheld or console – so we aren’t just talking Peggle, either.

Of these consoles, Nielsen found that the Xbox 360 was the most played with 23.1% of total minutes played, knocking last year’s champion – the PS2 – to second place with 20.4%. Coming up third was the Wii, with 19.0% of all minutes played, knocking a hole in the “but nobody plays the Wii!” arguments all-too-prone on gaming forums.

So yes, a majority of PSP owners are female. But I still can’t help but feel they don’t really want the Lilac PSP. I could be wrong, though.

(via Edge)