With Nintendo’s Wii worming its way into the homes of unlikely gamers, the number of U.S. households with video game consoles has spiked dramatically.

VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi has the details on the State of Media Democracy report from consultancy Deloitte, which found that game console ownership jumped from 44 percent of homes three years ago to 60 percent this year.

That’s probably because Generation X and Baby Boomers have either rekindled a lost love for video games or discovered it anew thanks to the Wii. Roughly 70 percent of Gen Xers now own a game console, compared to 53 percent in 2006, and 44 percent of Boomers own a console, up 13 percent from three years ago.

There are certainly other contributing factors besides the Wii. The recession may have caused people to seek video games, which provide more hours of entertainment on the dollar than a vacation or even a movie. I’m also hesitant to pin the entire rise in game console ownership on the Nintendo. Though the Wii has dominated sales charts since its debut, the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 have appealed to broader audiences by functioning as Blu-ray and DVD players, respectively, and by offering videos on demand. But the Wii’s success shows that people don’t necessarily need those extra multimedia features in a game console. They want to play games, and in that regard, the Wii still reigns.

As I read back over this information, a lot of it seems pretty obvious, but when you realize that the majority of households have a game console — not just a PC for playing casual browser games — it’s pretty remarkable.

 
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