WoW #1 in new Nielsen game ranking system
by Robin Torres 
Jul 27th 2007 at 11:00AM
Nielsen, the people who tabulate the television ratings, has launched a new game ranking system called Nielsen GamePlay Metrics and WoW is ranked number one in PC Games for the month of June. This is hardly surprising with 9 million current subscribers, but the fact that it outranks the next highest PC game by more than 4 times is pretty amazing.
Where do they get their numbers? Weekly surveys as described in their press release:
Nielsen GamePlay Metrics uses PC data collected from the Nielsen's Video Game Tracking Survey. Video Game Tracking is a weekly online survey of 1200 gamers 7 - 54 years of age. Qualifications include ownership of a console or PC, play video games at least 1 hour per week and have purchased at least one or more video games in the last 6 months. The Video Game Tracking online survey has been in the field for more than two years (104+ weeks).
It is good to see a ranking system based on what games are being played instead of how many are sold. They are reporting just over 17 hours a week average WoW playtime. For a level 70, that's about 3 well run raids... or 2 torturous raid catastrophes... or 4 weeknight new boss attempts with an extra night of farming the money required for repair bills.
How do you spend your 17 hours a week?
Filed under: Odds and ends, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Liel Jul 27th 2007 11:08AM
Makes sense WoW is #1 compared to Halo because Halo you can play and play and set down when your done, WoW in order to get something really done will take you twice as long.
Oscar Jul 27th 2007 11:28AM
Do the WoW hours include time spent afk whilst making dinner, cups of tea etc and using it as an expensive chat room?
bill gates Jul 27th 2007 11:53AM
I love WoW but this system is not exactly fair to none MMO games.
Paw Jul 27th 2007 12:09PM
I don't use the Nielson ratings for anything that they've done in the past, why care about the game rating service?
What next, Ebert and Roeper critiquing games and giving thier thumbs up/down? Oprah's Video Game Club? An off-shoot cable network from E! that dishes dirt on video game NPCs? VH1 "Who's Playing It Now" series that presents an hourlong documentary on has-been games?
viktorie Jul 27th 2007 12:23PM
Paw, we don't need any of that stuff, we have "G4, Gamer Television." Because you know those asshats are representative of the gaming community.
BaboonNL Jul 27th 2007 12:25PM
There is absolutely no way that Halo can be above Counter-Strike.
Paw Jul 27th 2007 12:48PM
we have "G4, Gamer Television."
BLASPHEMY!
Now, having read that, I have to go and wash my eyeballs!
Daghol Jul 27th 2007 12:49PM
1. Ratings are going to become increasingly important because of the advertising that is starting to appear in video games. Sales will not be important to advertisers. They want to know how many times you've seen the ad.
2. Yes, this system supports MMOs, but MMOs are more suited to advertisers as opposed to the average console game which is played through once and never picked up again.
3. Who is still playing Warcraft, the original? That is fricken amazing.
Lori Jul 27th 2007 12:51PM
To answer the question, I spend my 17 hours as follows:
12 hours raiding
21 hours farming mats (mostly motes)
9 hours leveling alts
Forstias Jul 27th 2007 2:33PM
.. have purchased at least one or more video games in the last 6 months ..
that should exclude most hardcore players ^^
Freehugz Jul 27th 2007 4:04PM
how does cs end up so low?
Michael Jul 27th 2007 5:16PM
Bogus ratings. They should have done actual research before even releasing those figures.
WoW on the top is just obvious by the 9million plus users.
But Warcraft??? The original? Really... ranked 8... It was a nice game and all for it's time was highly ranked. But 8? out of all todays games.
ploporc Aug 1st 2007 6:39AM
"...and have purchased at least one or more video games in the last 6 months."
Bad statistics. I haven't bought a new video game since WoW was launched (spring 2005 for me). Does that make me unqualified to add my hours to the survey?