PayPal data: 78% of U.S. gamers play on smartphones; PS4 edges out PC gaming

About 78 percent of U.S. gamers play on their smartphones, according to a survey by PayPal and SuperData Research. And about 49 percent of U.S. males play on the PlayStation 4, compared to about 48 percent who play on PC.

The survey looked at 10,000 consumers across 10 global markets to examine how people consume digital media. It found that women prefer casual genres like puzzle, arcade, and consumer games more than men.

And it found that 30 percent play mobile games in the office while 13 percent play laptop games and 10 percent play console games in the office. Console gamers also spend more money as U.S. console gamers buy new content every nine days compared to every 18 days on the PC, due to consoles’ predictable triple-A release cycles.

The survey also looked at e-books. It found that 60 percent of consumers who read them have access to other functions on the same devices. Only 27 percent of non-millennials are interested in romance, but it is the top genre for U.S. millennials at 43 percent. About 21 percent of U.S. digital media consumers prefer using Amazon Payments to purchase non-gaming content while PayPal is the e-wallet of choice for gamers.

PayPal studied players in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, Spain, the U.A.E., the U.K., and the U.S. Today it is only releasing data on the U.S. results. In the past three months, 46 percent of those surveyed said they had purchased video game downloads or in-game items. Most of those surveyed said they played games in the bedroom.

In digital gaming, 67 percent listed action as their preferred genre, compared to 62 percent for action-adventure and 53 percent for adventure. Roughly 58 percent said they had downloaded a puzzle game in the past three months.

Above: PlayStation 4 beats out the PC laptop in terms of U.S. gamers.

Image Credit: PayPal/SuperData

Console gaming consumes the most time of gaming types. About 40 percent of respondents said they played their console games one to two hours for each session, with 34 percent playing for two to four hours. This compares to 33 percent for one to two hours on the PC/Mac or laptops and 26 percent for two to four hours each.

The survey found that games were not impulse purchases. Only 27 percent of console gamers said they purchased a game immediately upon hearing about it while the number was 26 percent for mobile gamers and 20 percent for PC gamers.

Gaming video viewership is also on the rise. Over half of the female population surveyed (51 percent) indicated that they had watched gaming videos online in the past three months. Interest was high across genders with older gamers as well, with 48 percent of participants 35 or older stating that they had watched gaming videos in the past three months.

And 31 percent of those surveyed said they played most of the games for the gaming video they watched, with 23 percent stating that they played all of the games. While YouTube (80 percent) was listed as the top platform where gaming videos are watched, vertical-specific platforms also drew the attention of gamers. The others include Twitch (27 percent), PlayStation SharePlay (19 percent), Ustream (19 percent), and GamingLive (16 percent).

More than half of U.S. males surveyed spent $10 or more on donations for streamers on sites like Twitch. In fact, 15 percent of males surveyed reported spending $30-$49, and 10 percent stated that they spent $50-$69 over the past three months. While females surveyed spent at a lesser rate, 34 percent stated that they spent $10 or more over the past three months on donations on platforms such as Twitch.