The number of homes in the U.S. with consoles has been on the rise recently, with an estimated 41% of homes now having a console of some sort inside. Over the course of two years, console ownership was studied and it found that nearly half of the U.S. population has access to a game console.
It also found a variety of other statistics, such as the average playtime being just over 2 hours and a large increase in the number of games played on the Internet. While consoles continuing to evolve and offer more variety in games than 10 or 20 years prior, a large factor of this is probably in the increase connectivity - games are just so much more fun when you can play them with hundreds or even thousands of people people around the world. Also, the narrowing gap between what a PC can offer in terms of features and what a console has in terms of ease of use has likely impacted it as well. It'll be interesting to see a similar study in a few years, once the PS3 "takes off" as Sony claims it will.