That's because Wii has Mario Kart and Brawl, both games which far far surpass the sales of PS3 games.

lol? This study is seriously flawed.  It is not an accurate representation of the public and is therefore statistically irrelevant.

Where did you get the PS3 numbers BigFatJ? I can't see them in here.

 And you got your degree in Math from which college again? I think I will trust the people who actually studied the subject over a random member of an internet message board.

Yes read the real report, of the people polled that actually play online, 87% are playing on PC, 50% are playing on 360, 29% are on Wii, and 20% are on PS3.

These people overlap, so someone could play PC, PS3, 360, and Wii online, while others could only play consoles or a console online, as 13% don't use PC at all online for games just consoles.

A chart to better understand the data.

Note the 20% came from the OP which I cannot find any other data for the PS3 percent as even the press release doesn't have it. Gamespot also has 20% listed as they also were given the update from NPD this makes their info quite possibly the truth.

Fair enough.  But I know statistics fairly well, and did quite well in Biostatistical Analysis at my University (Canadian).  This data set is biased, probably because of the fact that it came from an online survey.

If you can't follow my reasoning then don't worry about it.  Just don't read too much into the percentages that are given.  They are more a representation of total marketshare than of "this % of wii/360/ps3 owners game online".

This survey ascribes to the "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit" motto.

Found that additional data in that Gamespot article. Thanks.

Epoch, it appears you've misinterpreted the data, although I can understand why because the original report got it wrong. It is not saying that 25% of gamers play online, comapred to 19% last year: it is saying that the number of people who play online has grown by 25% year over year. This can be understood in Gamespot's revision of the information: Overall, the study found that combined online gaming has risen dramatically, up 25 percent over the year prior, which itself saw a 19 percent bump on 2007. Surprisingly, though, it also discovered that despite the burgeoning popularity of massively multiplayer online games, PC online gaming was "slightly" down from the year prior. However, NPD did not say exactly how much the decrease was

Yea, that makes sense.  The original wording in the report is vague.  However, people are drawing bad conlusion from this report, as it really doesn't state much, other than that online gaming has increased YoY.

"The NPD Group, online gaming for video game consoles and portables enjoyed a statistically significant increase from 19 percent in 2008 to 25 percent in 2009"

 Actually i understand statistics quite well. Math minor from the University of New Orleans. No heavy focus on statistics so I am at a loss to explain all of this, but I can follow quite well normally. The problem is we have fuck all for data here. The Arstechnica report was written by someone who doesn't understand statistics and so is untrustworthy as far as original data is concerned (their usage of the term "statistically significant" is a big red flag). The press release from NPD proper has even less information and is even more confusing when you try to decifer it. I'd give an arm and a leg to see what the raw data on this is. Not only to see where the PS2 and Xbox figur into it all (curiosity) but also see what the numbers actually say.

 And yes, it is unlikely that this generalizes perfectly to the general population of the US or the world. They key factor though is if it generalizes to the general gamer population. I can't find where it says this is from an online survey, but I find it relatively suspect. The original pol included 20,000 people and only a fraction of them actually played online.

Right.  That's exactly what the report says, and not much else.  Extrapolate what you can from it.  The problem arises when people start assuming that this means that "29% of wii owners play online". 

I'm still certain that this data set is biased and unrepresentative of the general public though.