PlayStation 2 Still Pulling Players In

According to the latest Nielson reports, PlayStation 2 is still kicking ass and taking names as the most played game console in June by a whopping 42 percent. The report up on PRnewswire also lists World of Warcraft as the most played PC game by over four times any other PC title. All these stats were obtained from 68.1 million individuals monitored electronically by the Nielsen GamePlay Metrics. So what exactly is Nielsen hoping to accomplish?

“With Nielsen GamePlay Metrics, we have significantly advanced the understanding of how video game consoles are used and which games are actually being played,” said Jeff Herrmann, Vice President of Nielsen Games and Nielsen Wireless. “This is the first glimpse of metered in-home video game player data, providing game publishers, console manufacturers, advertisers and competing entertainment media with the most accurate, objective, and quantifiable metric available. We believe this will change the discussions surrounding which games get developed for what consoles and how publishers represent their actual audience to advertisers.”

My biggest concern here is if Nielson will end up skewing and distorting game development the way they have for television. Considering many shows that are popular – but not voted on by Nielson numbers or families – often see the axe quickly is this just another way to encourage inbred thinking in the video game development world?

Games are expensive to produce. Retail and direct sell have been the metric used to judge a titles success so far but this adds the question of how long players play a title into the equation which may lead to repercussions for developers who specialize in making games like RPGs that take a lot of time to complete and which players often take extended breaks from over the course of the product’s lifecycle.