Smartphones Most Popular Gaming Device: PayPal Survey

PayPal released its Digital Goods Economy Survey Tuesday, covering 10 countries and a consumer base of 10,000 consumers. The survey, developed in collaboration with Superdata Research, looks at habits, attitudes and behaviors of consumers in relation to digital gaming.

Among the findings are revelations tied to users' gaming habits and the survey has called smartphones the "new gaming consoles."

"U.S. respondents use smartphones (78 percent) when asked which devices they used to play digital games, versus a tablet (59 percent) or laptop (47 percent). The 2016E mobile games market will be worth $37.6 billion, accounting for just under half (49%) of the total 2016E $77.3 billion worldwide games market," the survey stated.

The U.S. consumer is more likely to spend on video games than eBooks while action games is the most popular video game genre as 67 percent U.S. consumers prefer action games.

The report says that a majority of U.S. consumers preferred to pay for their gaming needs via their smartphones as it provides "ease of use." Payment processing speed is a huge consideration for online gaming purchases and smartphones are the fastest device for such transactions.

Respondents said that they would prefer multi-use devices rather than specialized single-use devices. Console gaming was found to be time-consuming and expensive, according to respondents.

However, in a surprising finding, the survey stated that gaming videos have become more popular than games themselves — 68 percent of milennials who buy digital media watch videos about games.

"Donating to streamers on sites such as YouTube and Twitch has become a recurrent expenditure for our survey group. In fact, more than 15 percent of U.S. males surveyed reported spending $30-$49 and 10 percent stated that they spent $50-$69 over the past three months. Thirty-four percent of females surveyed reported spending $10 or more over the past three months," according to the survey.