Nielsen: 360 has most 'active users' in 2009, Wii has fewest

just the most active because of netflix. Nobody on my friends list even plays games. I turn it on now all i see is netflix.

If you cut it down into real numbers, it means that there are roughly the same amount of active users on 360 and Wii (360 ahead by a few hundred thousand or so), and PS3 only behind Wii by about 500k

And that, i would guess, is the makeup of the core gamer, across all the platforms. about 9 million of us if we make the incorrect assumption that every one of those users is a single-console owner, and so therefore less than that by a good margin (6 million?)

I also find it disturbing that 11% is the high score on this graph.

"Everyone and their dog owns a Wii by this point, but very few actually play them consistently"

no shit Sherlock? you know i honestly HOPE AND PRAY that Nintendo (not just NoA and NoJ but Nintendo as a whole) see's this chart and get their asses into gear! honestly i don't care if they develop casual games every here and there! i mean i for one would welcome it because i would love to play a casual game every now and again and take a break (a small one of course) from playing CORE games 24/7. long story short i just wish Nintendo would cater to both audiences. release TONS of core games and when we're thirsty for a casual game? quench that thirst with a nice, fun casual game or games.

360 has a sharp drop in May... RROD??
I think I got my RROD Replacement Box in May...

ps2 gamers you guys need to step your game up and get you a ps3

Ahem...

Who cares?

Kentuckyfried and Cody; your comments speak for themselves and show your true intelligence, or lack thereof. By kentuckyfrieds standards, every body from Kentucky is a jackass that makes broad sweeping generalizations because he's pissed he has to work at best buy for a living.

By the way, even my little kids prefer 360 over the wii and their ds. I've bought them every good wii game there is and they'd rather play 360 with their old man any day. Even if I'm not playing, they won't go near that wii. Big waste of money.

omgz teh PS3 is to rulez! wii is teh suxrs!!! wacca wacca

how accurate are these things??? they dont seem too on the ball to me, I mean the original Xbox follows almost the same like as the 360, the Gamecube suddenly had a major uplifting??? these just dont look right to me...
But I can see 360 usage being ahead of the rest after all when your paying for a service u kinda want to get more than your moneys worth dont you??? Hence you dont have as many "casual" gamers on the 360

What's really interesting his where the graph dips for every line, most noticeably in May. Wonder if it's just the lack of new games that caused the slump or something else?

@ devilsei

"Yeah, seriously.
Honestly? I'd rather be a PS3 Fanboy than a 360 one. The same people who are 360 Fanboys, are the same immature kids who clog up games and bitch and moan about everything. I own both consoles, and have played both online, and the "pay-to-play" seems to attract every D-bag to it, while the PS3 (at least in my experiences) tends to be a bit more mature and friendly.

The only thing I really hate about the Xbox 360, is its community, and you Wallace, are a shining example of why."





First of all.. I doubt you own both because most people who own multiple consoles are more open minded than you and wouldn't say they'd rather be a fanboy of one over the other. Second, you can't speak for everyone on XBL worldwide. You're one player who's already said he was a fanboy of PS3 and of course you're going to say you like PSN better. Duh?!?!? I'd hardly take you as a person of an unbiased opinion. You're probably this kid right here......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc

even though i own a 60 gig ps3 i often play ps2 games on my ps2. i still have occasional binges of MKDD on on of my game cubes.

Please don't put your stupid links on this blog anymore.

I hope you get the ban hammer!

Yeah! PS2 wins! (For me, next gen can wait until next next gen. I'm skipping this shitty generation...)

PS2 less than original Xbox? I'm sorry, but no amount of Nielsen "data" will get me to believe that.

My 360 had the new Falcon 65nm tech and the larger heatsink, I used it 3 days a week for about 2 hrs... an you now what? It's 6 feet under (literally).

THE END!

:D

I can understand PS2 usage; you can still buy one off the shelf. The OXB usage floors me, however; I thought I was the only one still playing on the venerable black box. Honestly, it's been my salvation through many an RROD. It and my still beloved PS2. Who would be interested in these stats? Third party game developers. Also, if Netflix has bumped the 360s stats up, how much, do you suppose blue-ray movie play has raised the PS3s?

Bahahahaha, it's funny because everyone's flaming...

Huh. Pretty interesting, though not surprising.

I own a PS3/Wii/GCN (to have my bases covered with good ol' Nintendo games but Sony's handful of great exclusives) and, while I own the usual suspects like Brawl, MKW, Super Mario Galaxy, I'll play my Wii probably two or three times a week... whereas I'm on my PS3 almost every day of the aforementioned week.

On top of that, my GCN library is about 3x the size of the Wii's and has a lot more substantial games.

Damn, fanboys are annoying. And PS3 fanboys are the worst. Why are they so angry? Sometimes these asshats make me feel guilty about owning a PS3.

New marketing slogan: "PS3: Great Machine, Crap Fanbase".

no wonder why many people get rrod

How are you doing this photoshopping? I take it you don't actually own the Adobe Photoshop software that costs, what, $300. Using Paint to draw penises and goggly eyes on people stopped being fun a while ago.

Let's do some simple analysis.

http://en-us.nielsen.com/rankings/insights/rankings/video_games

% of all measured console minutes
1 XBOX 360 22.8
2 PLAYSTATION 2 21.3
3 WII 17.1
4 PLAYSTATION 3 11.1
5 XBOX 6.0
6 GAMECUBE 2.4
7 OTHER 19.2

The "Active User" ratings measure what percentage of the audience plays video games for hours on end. The 360 wins that handily and the Wii comes in dead last.

Since the PS3 is a close second in "Active Users", but a distant fourth in proportion of play minutes, you can easily see that a small contingent of heavily consuming users make up most of its use, and many PS3s are going unused or infrequently used.

The Wii, on the other hand, has a very small number of these "Active Users" but a high proportion of play time (17% of all console play time vs 23% for the 360), which has to indicate that more users play regularly, since far fewer have the multi-hour extended gaming sessions seen on other consoles.

The most use is clearly on the 360, and more of the 360's users will play it all day.

Well, Cody, this avid 360 owner works full time at an army surplus warehouse as webmaster, with several other hardworking people, all with families and lives. I am married with three kids, and play the games WITH them (I know, it's astounding). The other guys at the warehouse that have systems play their 360's more. One guy has all three systems, he calls the PS3 the "doorstop" and the Wii the "paperweight".

Although Microsoft sucks horribly on most fronts, I gotta say I'm impressed with their gaming division. As I own 450+ PS2 games and Sony told me to go dick myself when they killed Backwards Compatibility (despite having a fully functional emulator and the BC hardware only costing $5 to make) and the Wii churning out udder shit and calling it gold (Metroid: Other M makes it now 5 games I care about, total, on the system). Factor in the XNA and XBL games community and support for independent games for years, and these results make sense.

I'm not a fanboy, I'm not. I'll buy a Wii eventually, for $50 at a garage sale, and then the five or six worthwhile games, but Nintendo is damaging itself, and the nixing their quality control is what did them in, and Sony decided that we ought to keep buying PS2's, even though the slimline won't work with a lot of games, to save $5, instead of supporting the people who made Sony a player in the console market for years, which is also, their own fault. If you want your console of choice to succeed, don't let the companies running them slack off or screw over their customers, competition is good for us all. But Nintendo is flushing their legacy down the toilet and Sony makes us feel unappreciated, so oddly enough Microsoft is winning, and for good reason.

Gotta go make my mom pay for my XBL now, cause, you know, I'm unemployed, fat, and ugly. Yup.

Everyone get's so douchy when they dicuss another console that they HATE because sometime in their life they either decided to devote their life to Nazicism for Sony/Microsoft, OR they're getting paid large amounts of money to insult a random person with "you live at home with your mother". Seriously? You're not getting paid for this (except you Cody, for some the fuck reason Sony is dishing out BJ's for every person your manage to "zing".
No wonder I stick to PC.

Where's PC gaming? Hm?

Hahaha!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. People keep buying the Wii for some reason, but nobody buy's Wii games, because they all suck, and nobody plays games on their Wii. Everybody has one, and they all sit in the corner, collecting dust.

Doh! I guess I should think about whether common expressions make practical sense before I use them.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but if it's true that these statistics are collected by having gamers document their playing time, I'd imagine that only fairly hardcore gamers would bother actually doing this (and I'd imagine casual gamers wouldn't even know of this survey's existence).

This implies that the people documenting their time playing Wii games are most hardcore gamers. However, the Wii clearly doesn't not cater to hardcore gamers. It has a few offerings, of course (e.g., Super Mario Galaxy, Twilight Princess, perhaps Okami, and maybe a few others), but not enough to keep a hardcore gamer interested except on the rare occasions when he's playing such a game.

This leads to selection bias: the people filling out the survey are people who naturally aren't going to play the Wii very much.

This is just a rough argument, of course, but I think it's worth considering.

Typos! I should check my writing more carefully next time. Sorry about that.