NPD Shows PC as #1 Online Gaming Platform

The first thing you thought when you read that headline was "much of that has to be WoW right?", well it's hard to say. The press release states that the hours spent online gaming a week went from 7.3 hrs to 8.0, that doesn't sound like WoW players to me. According to The Daedalus Project, a site on the psychology of MMORPG's, the average play time is 22.7 hrs - which I still say is grossly under spec. I've never met a WoW player that wasn't rabidly spending every waking free moment playing. So the question is who are the gamers in question being, err, questioned?

According to the NPD info, and I quote: "Of those gamers ages 2 and older reporting that they personally play video games on at least one type of system". Ages 2 and older? Does goo-goo gah-gah translate to Ya, I play GTA IV at least 5 hours a week somehow or does randomly hammering on buttons count? I think we should really be polling the people who actually buy the games they play and not include the screaming 12 year old's who have no business removing their muzzles.

A playing time of 8 hrs a week seems grossly inaccurate somehow, taking into account the absolute hammering the Modern Warfare 2 servers were getting. Another statistic that seems off is the 20% of game purchases being digital. Unless that statistic comes completely from the PC side of the stats, it just doesn't coincide with Steam's sales figures.

The important takeaway for me was that "The PC is still the most-used system for online gaming, with 85% of online gamers reporting using a PC for online gaming activities." Still, still, as in was, as in is!

PC Gaming in decline indeed!