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Nielsen's First PlayMetrics Results Announced
June was the first month that Nielsen's new approach to tracking game play was fully implemented, and the statistics from last month are now out. Some sample numbers: "The company determined that 68.1 million individuals used a videogame console in June, playing an average of 7.5 days during the month. The PlayStation 2 was the most-played console, accounting for 42 per cent of the total console usage ... The Xbox 360 accounted for eight per cent of console playing time. Its users logged in an average of 2.2 sessions per day, with an average session length of 61 minutes. The PS3 accounted for 1.5 per cent of console usage. Its users logged in an average of 1.9 sessions per day with an average session length of 83 minutes-the longest playing session of all consoles studied. The Wii, by comparison, accounted for four per cent of overall console playing time. Its users logged in an average of 1.78 sessions per day with an average session length of 57 minutes." GameDaily has further demographics from the results.
So all that anecdotal evidence is finally backed up by numbers. Good to hear. Really, this is no surprise at all - the majority (86.5%) of game-playing households aren't even playing a next-gen system. We're also seeing the unsurprising breakdown of players - about 60% play a 360, 30% play a Wii, and the remaining 10% are playing PS3. I'm a bit surprised Wii numbers aren't higher - but then again the console is still effectively sold out, and is suffering from a lack of games still. The 360, by contrast, has been out longer and has more games. The PS3 continues to be the laughing stock of the gaming community as a whole - only the hardcore players are playing it. This data will be more interesting as time passes, and trends can be mapped. Also, I think numbers for the XBox (and, snerk, GC) need to be collected, since they're collecting them for the PS2. That way we can see a complete picture of the current and last generation.
Bullshit and Hogwash.
Nielsen's stats are worthless in SO many ways. Let me illustrate two...
1) Ranking Warcraft and Halo as popular as Counter-Strike is ridiculous.
2) As far as I can ascertain, no one within 2 'degrees of separation' (that is, no one that anyone I know knows) of me has ever been involved in a Nielsen poll, for TV or gaming or any of the other things they take statistics for. That tells me their polling sample is either horribly biased against every demographic that contains me, or that it is so small as to be statistically insufficient (or both).