Well, come back and explain to us how Nielson are messing up their statistics later when you are able to think again.

The graphic takes things completely out of context. Since it is not starting at zero, it gives you the impression that the 360 has about five times more active users while it actually doesn't even have double the amount. All consoles are somewhere between 5.8 % and 11.3 %. That doesn't really sound like high numbers, does it?

Also, speaking in absolute numbers, the Wii has about 3.6 M active users according to this statistic, while the PS3 has about 2.3 M and the 360 has about 3.55 M

Looking at it like this, it all seems way more reasonable than reading that fanboyish article that comes along with the graphic. Still, I'm not really sure how good statistics work for this question, and as many others have stated, as long as it isn't specified what "active user" actually means, the whole thing is pretty meaningless.

What I mean is this strategy to use statistics is significantly flawed, you cant just get a couple of hundreds of people to give an opinion and then claim the entire industry is doing the same as those people.

That's a standard thing to do with graphs, you'll find the same thing on currency charts etc. I agree it's misleading if you're not used to it, but when you're used to the convention the space between the minimum and zero is redundant, thus removed.

Wait until you take stats in highschool.

Right, I guess that's why all those statistical samples of voters that predicted an Obama win were wrong.

If you have the interest, you should go study up a bit on statistical inference.

Yeah but... that's how NPD gets their numbers too...

But that's how it works and it works very well.

These are all very good points.

I was going to make the same point about what an "active user"  is.  Without a frame of reference, it is difficult to really discuss this intelligently. And we know that the data providers seem to release only enough information publicly to get people upset, but not enough to be valuable.

Mike from Morgantown

Take in cosideration following things:

- Nielsen Company is likely to provide US-only data, so it's better to talk about this region only, not to extrapolate to other regions.

- Nielsen Company made it's survey on per user basis, rather than per household. So those "active" users should be counted as a part of whole console userbase, not just the amount of consoles sold to consumes.

Finally... consoles sold to consumers in America only x users per household for US x "active" user percentage from the survey = your absolute numbers. X360: ~5.16M, Wii ~4.92M, PS3: ~2.25M - numbers relevant for America only.

I hope I got it right.

//BTW I'd like to see "usage per household" graph, I bet Wii should take top or near the to place in US =)