Nielson reveal Wii owners more upscale, PS2 accounts for 42% of console gaming

Friday 27 Jul 2007

Nielson Company recently launched its gaming industry data-tracking service, GamePlay Metrics. GamePlay Metrics combines data from Nielson’s TV monitoring service from over 12 000 households with approximately 33 000 individuals, electronically tracking and reporting on the monthly usage of the six main video gaming consoles that are most widely available (including PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii and GameCube) and PC games.

Sony PS2 still tops

Despite the availability of three next generation consoles, Sony’s PS2 remains a firm favourite among gamers, accounting for 42% of video game console usage during June. The original Xbox was the next most frequently played system (17%), followed by the Xbox 360 (8%), the GameCube (5.8%), the Wii (4%) and the PS3 (1.5%). The remaining 21% was divided between other console systems.

If you are a PC gamer you will be interested to know that World of Warcraft is played more than four times as much as any other PC game. Although this is somewhat unsurprising given Blizzard’s recent announcement that World of Warcraft now has a player base totaling more than 9 million subscribers worldwide. WOW gamers play an average of 17 hours per week, accounting for almost 18% of all PC gaming in June.

Wii facts

Additional findings included the fact that there are seasonal use patterns of game play. For example, Wii’s peak usage hour was 5pm in April but now during the summer break the usage of Wii peaks at 8pm. Another rather interesting finding was that Wii households are more upscale, likely to earn more than $100 000 income per year.

Daily sessions and average play time

Nielson is also tracking how many daily play sessions each console gets as well as the average length of these sittings. The report revealed that 68.1 million individuals used a video game console during June, playing an average of 7.5 days during the month. Xbox 360 gamers logged the highest average of 2.2 sessions on the days they played, logging an average session of 61 minutes. PS3 gamers, however, logged an average of 1.9 sessions on the days they played but the average session length stands higher at 83 minutes. The Xbox and PS2 were next in line, sharing the next longest playtimes, with an average of 62 minutes. The GameCube clocked in at an average of 55 minutes per session.

Nielsen GamePlay Metrics Console Usage Report Trend for June 2007/May 2007

Who’s playing what

Nielson GamePlay Metrics can show “who is playing games, on which systems, at what times, and, when integrated with other Nielsen data, illustrates which other media platforms are also engaging gamers and which consumer goods they’re likely to buy.” The ultimate goal of this service is to establish a metric that can be used for buying and selling both dynamic and static advertisements in PC and console video games.

Nielson collects PC data from a video game tracking survey of 1 200 gamers between 7 – 54 years of age that it has been running for over two years. Gamers must own a console or PC, play video games at least 1 hour per week and have purchased one or more video games in the last six months.

“With Nielsen GamePlay Metrics, we have significantly advanced the understanding of how video game consoles are used and which games are actually being played,” said Jeff Herrmann, Vice President of Nielsen Games and Nielsen Wireless. “This is the first glimpse of metered in-home video game player data, providing game publishers, console manufacturers, advertisers and competing entertainment media with the most accurate, objective, and quantifiable metric available. We believe this will change the discussions surrounding which games get developed for what consoles and how publishers represent their actual audience to advertisers.”

PC game rankings

As mentioned above, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft was the most played PC game in June. It turns out that it was hardly a competition because WOW outranks the next most played game by four times. Following WOW the top five PC games for June included Halo: Combat Evolved (3.6% of PC play time, average of 8.5 hours per week), The Sims from EA (3.3% of total PC play time, average of less than 4 hours per week), Halo 2 from Microsoft Game Studios and RuneScape from Jagex.

Source: Nielson