Fanboys and hardcore gamers have been up and about since videogames were born. Luckily, the rest of the known world is starting to acknowledge that little tidbit of information.

An IGN article talks about the a market research report done by the NPD Group on why people want to buy a next-gen console. In the report entitled "Next Generation Purchase Intent," consumers were divided into four gamer types: Prefer Portable, Infrequent, Secondary and Heavy Gamers. Obviously, just about everyone on QJ falls under their Heavy Gamer category, described as being the ones who use up the most time and money on games.

According to the report, 87% of the respondents looked at appealing game titles when choosing their picks for next-gen. It was probably one of the reasons the previous PlayStations went so well post-launch, though it's a bit more spread out for this generation of game consoles. They also cited backward compatibility (68% of respondents) as another important factor in choosing one console over another. Again, another stalemate of sorts with quantity for all three consoles, so the price of playing older games or using your discs from previous consoles will definitely play a part here.

Most surprising in this report is some information taken from hardcore gamers. According to this, hardcore gamers are just a little bit more interested in getting a Wii (79%) rather than a PS3 (70%). There's a big "but" here, though: if they could afford to get only one piece of next-gen hardware, consumers gravitate towards the PS3 instead. Let's just hope they know how much it actually costs beforehand.

Before you go all nuts though, please remember that the data was collected from July 11 to 28, through an online survey of 16,670 consumers aged 6 to 44." Why you're answering an online survey at the age of six, we have no idea.