[General Discussion] Trend Index: What Americans are Playing

As you might have heard recently, Nielsen Media Research compiled a list of the Top 10 PC Games played by Americans, and a List of Consoles and their usage, with the latest polling taking place in October 2008: Trend Index - Video Games

First, the PC titles:


Next, an aggregation of what consoles people are playing and how often:



Now obviously this is only a slice of the total population as not everyone here participated in that study, so keep that in mind. The results here would be very different from a study conducted by Valve for example.

My impression on the PC Titles: I'm sure most here have played the Top 4 and Halo, but the other ones I'm surprised to see up high on this list (At my last job I worked on Cellphone versions of some of those games, so to see the PC versions of them being popular is not all that surprising, I just didn't figure it'd be in the Top 10). In place of some of those more E-for-Everyone rated games, I would have figured another RTS or perhaps one of dozen FPSes to grace the ranks, but I guess the lesson here is not to underestimate casual titles.

For myself on the Console Usage: The original Xbox being more popular than the PS3 was a bit of a surprise, I would have figured it would have been regulated to Xbox Media Center hackers & people who haven't upgraded to the newest consoles. The Playstation 2's number one spot is not really unexpected, but I would have thought the usage minutes would have been closer to the 360 and Wii. I would have liked to get a sample of what other consoles are listed in "Other", but I guess anything from the original Playstation to retro-gaming standby NES would apply.

So for those reading these lists: How accurate do you see this being, and what correlations do you find with it in your own experiences? In other words: what's your take on this?

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