Skip to main content

Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

UK northerners play Xbox 360, and southerners play PS3

It's infographic time!

In the UK, northerners prefer Xbox 360 and southerners prefer PlayStation 3.

Scots spend the most time playing games and prefer RPGs. South-westerly folk spend the least time playing and prefer adventure games.

Yes, these are the irrefutable findings of a survey - one brought vividly to life as an infographic, no less!

Did you know that only one per cent of the UK plays puzzle games?

Did you realise that the Wii capital of the UK is Bristol?

Did you know that PC is the most popular platform of all?

These are the extrapolated views of 1970 self confessed "active video gamers". They are all aged 18 or over and live in the UK. The opted in to an email study conducted by Playr2, a price comparison website.

Here are the statistics in full.

The most popular platforms are PC (55 per cent), PS3 (52 per cent), Xbox 360 (48 per cent), Wii (39 per cent), PS2 (33 per cent), DS (21 per cent), PSP (14 per cent) and PS Vita (eight per cent).

In the North, 58 per cent of people play Xbox 360. In the South, 55 per cent play PS3.

In Bristol, 15 per cent of people play Wii - the most of any city in the UK.

People in London have the most valuable gaming collections (£517, based on average worth), followed by Liverpool (£502), Manchester (£496), Cardiff (£488) and Leeds (£445).

The most popular genres are: FPS (16.6 per cent), RPG (14.5 per cent), adventure (12.7 per cent), sports (10.4 per cent), platform (9 per cent), fighting/combat (8.1 per cent), simulation (7.5 per cent), survival-horror (5.2 per cent), automotive/racing (5 per cent), arcade (4.7 per cent), other (3.2 per cent), other (2.1 per cent) - er? - and puzzle (1 per cent).

The post popular genre in the south-east of England is sports. In the area consisting of the north-west of England, London and the Midlands, it's FPS.

The UK spends 9.4 hours a week gaming, on average. In Scotland the average is 11.1 hours, followed by the north-west of England (10.9 hours), the north-east of England (10.7 hours), the south-east of England (9.5 hours), Wales (9.2 hours), the Midlands (9.1 hours), London (8.7 hours) and the south-west of England (5.8 hours).

Read this next