Survey: PSP, iPhone owners buy more games

The organizers of yesterday's MI6 Games Marketing Conference wanted to make sure that attendees didn't walk away empty-handed when it came to industry insights, so they shared with them the results of a wide-ranging survey into gamer habits.

One of the survey's key findings was that iPhone owners represented the "greatest video gaming marketing opportunities," a determination based on a number of factors. The survey found that gamers who happen to own an iPhone spend more time gaming than any other group of cell phone users and are the fastest-growing group of gamers, the heaviest users of social networking sites, and the heaviest users of other gaming platforms.

Perhaps more importantly, iPhone users also buy more games for any platform. The average number of new games purchased in the last 12 months by iPhone owners was 4.57--more than all other systems. Owners of Sony's PSP were the second most spendthrift gamers, picking up an average of 4.12 games each during the previous year. The PlayStation 3 was next on the list (3.99), followed by Palm PDA owners (3.70), the Xbox 360 (3.55), the Wii (3.44), and the DS (3.39).

The results for used-game purchases were slightly different, with PSP owners topping the list, reporting an average of 2.71 used games bought for any platform over the past year. That was followed by the PS3 (2.54), iPhone (2.33), Xbox 360 (2.15), and DS and Palm PDAs (2.01 each).

Gamers were also asked to rate the various factors that influence their buying decisions on a scale of 1 to 5. "A good price" was the most important factor, with 72 percent of respondents rating it a 4 or a 5. Playing a demo was the second most popular choice, receiving that score from 62 percent of gamers polled.

Interestingly, seeing the game's packaging in the store was rated as highly influential by 50 percent of respondents, significantly more than online reviews (42 percent), renting a game (39 percent), post-launch downloadable content (32 percent), and online multiplayer features (27 percent).

The survey was conducted by E-Poll Research in February, with input from more than 1,000 gamers.