With the government moving to digital broadcast and offering those lovely little coupons, some might think that progress is pushing the adoption of HD sets on consumers; however, it would appear HD TV manufacturers should be giving a pretty lengthy shout-out to PS3 and Xbox 360 manufacturers Sony and Microsoft, because 18% of the HD sets sold in the last year were to gamers who wanted to take full advantage of their next-gen consoles.

According to a study conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates, as reported by GameDaily, sales of HD TV sets have led to 25% of America owning their very own pixel popping, sleek and shiny HD sets. That is a 5% increase over the previous year’s sales.

Out of the total HD TVs sold, 18% of those were sold to gamers who bought their HD sets explicitly for use with either the Playstation 3 or the Xbox 360 (I’d say Wii, but c’mon…who are you kidding). That has to be worth a kickback or something, right?

Probably most interesting about Magid’s findings is that current HD set owners are expected to be the ones who carry the torch for the wide adoption of HD sets. It would seem that most current HD TV owners intend to purchase additional sets at some point in time. Let’s not even talk about HD envy your friends will get when they get tired of coming over to your house to game, and finally break down and buy their own sets.

It has to be worth noting as well that many people who bought next gen consoles like the PS3 or the 360 did so with the intention of using them not only for games but for their HD disc drives (everyone look away awkwardly for all the hapless 360 HD-DVD add-on adopters). The Playstation 3 is selling even with non-gamers because of its inexpensive Blu-ray drive and other media features. That could mean that perhaps not all 18% of console owners buying HD TVs are what we consider to be gamers.

Nonetheless, if the industry recognizes that gamers are driving sales of expensive technology, maybe some of the TV manufacturers can pull some political sway so the government stops harping on games every time a school shooting happens, or a little kid is “traumatized” by the violence of Call of Duty 4 his parents bought him.

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Related:

Sony brings free PS3 with HDTV purchase offer to the US

Xbox 360 far outsells Wii and PS3 in September thanks to Halo 3

Nintendo Wii to fade into obscurity, Xbox 360, PS3 will ultimately win

Xbox 360 beats Wii to 10 million US sales - PS2 outsold PS3 in last year

Sony Australia offers free PS3s with Bravia HDTVs

Stumble It! Tips N4G

Entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 11:07 am under Games, Hardware, Industry, Marketing, Media, Opinion, PS3, PlayStation 3, Sales Figures, Xbox 360.

Read more entries by Triston McIntyre.