People Buying Less, But Playing More (Wii Excepted)

By Luke Plunkett (Edit, to draft, Slurp)

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Times are tough. 2009's gaming lineup isn't as strong as 2007's, or 2008's. So people aren't buying as many consoles as they used to. But those that already have one, well, they're playing the crap out of them.

Researchers Nielsen have conducted their latest study on people's gaming habits, and have found that compared to this time last year, console usage is up a whopping 21%.

Also released were figures showing the percentage of "active" users; as in, those who are actually using their consoles. At the top of the list are the 360 and PS3, unsurprisingly, but take a look at the bottom of the chart. Way down the bottom. Beneath the GameCube.

Yeah, that's the Wii, with only 6% of users actually playing the thing regularly. The other 94%? They're either using the Wii infrequently, or not using it at all.

Wii Has Fewest Percentage of Active Users, says Nielsen [Industrygamers]

Didn't we have a similar chart to this before, and it turned out they had some of the legend wrong?

More fancy graphs:

The expanded games like Wii sports and Wii fit don't require the time invested that most classical games do. Not a surprice really. Some people just don't have as much time for games as others.

I expect this graph to change after NSMB Wii though. 2D Mario is addictive.

Kinda expected for Wii as more mainstream console to have less "active" users, unlikely it tops this graph anytime soon if ever . Though Nielsen didn't specify who are "active" users? Obvious guess, someone who play particular home console more than X hours\minutes per week\day. The real question is... X = ?

At "Usage Mintues Percentage" graph Wii is high due to massive userbase, though lower than it was earlier (if my memory doesn fail, last survey cover H2 2008 time period), when it actually was on top of X360, little lower than PS2. The lack of software releases and unsatisfactory results of AC: City Folk and Wii Music (as Iwata said) lead not only to diminishing hardware sales but also to fewer active gamers in H1 2009. My guess, Wii will be on top of the "Usage Mintues Percentage" graph at the end of 2009.

Though "Console usage by Gender" graph is weird. My common sense says me that PS2, X360 and Wii graphs are believable at least, but PS3, Xbox and GC male\female percentage is total BS. I'm curious what were the questions they asked in the survey to get this kind of data?

BTW Here's results of previous Nielsen survey "Usage Minutes Percentage", PS2 flat, X360 up, Wii down:

Normally I'd wanna see the methodology... but why even bother?

Another researcher that analyzes data and the result ends up being detrimental to the Wii.

Another set of replies that basically say that researcher doesn't know what they're talking about.

The initial graph is being misinterpreted. What it says is that a higher percentage of PS3 and 360 play their consoles more actively, whereas Mai's first graph just states that when someone DOES play their console, this is the average time that they play it. (With 50M owners, the average user activity should be expected do be lower...but still)

There's room for confusion, but using exaggeration to drive a point across: If you played a Wii only 3 times, but each time you played for 2 hours....well the Wii user minutes average would be 120 minutes......but the "active user" percentage would be WAY low. Make what you will out of that

Who said that they didn't know what they're talking about?

The only one close to that was mine, but I don't think Nielson is wrong. I checked and it's in line with their previous data.

Oh, and a step further, let's say the average active user percentage for the Wii is about 6%, the PS3 is about 10% and the 360 is about 11%, according to the graph.

10% of 23M is 2.3M. 11% of 31M is 3.14M.....6% of 53M is 3.12M. So in all actuality, in raw numbers, they're all pretty close.

It just looks bad that out of 52M people only 3.12M "play actively", when you get similar numbers on a smaller userbase somewhere else. Because if you take that data and extrapolate it, people will just think that once the 360 or PS3 get to where the Wii is now, it's active users will be way above the Wii, wherever it may be when the other consoles get to where it's at right now

14 year olds have a lot of time on their hands, apparently.