According the report from Nielson the original Xbox is seeing more playtime than the PS3 this year. That statistic is simply alarming.

Well, it would depend on whether the original PlayStation 2 suffered the same. After all, it was marketed as a cheap DVD player, while the PS3 was marketed as a cheap Blu-ray player.

I'd believe the PS2 over any console, but there is no way the original Xbox got more playtime than the PS3. It had nearly no good games back in the day and it has been abandoned for a long time by MS.

It's entirely possible for the original Xbox to have gotten more play time than the PS3. Halo: Combat Evolved was the #3 most played PC game, so it's possible that many Xbox owners are still playing Halo 1 as well.

However, that may show a flaw in the methodology: for example, even though Halo is an Xbox game, and it may have been interpreted by Neilsen as Xbox time, many of the players may have been using Xbox 360s to play it as well. Similarly, it may be a reason why PS3 usage was measured low; maybe people are playing PS2 games on PS3s, and Neilsen is measuring the PS3 usage as PS2 usage. I'd like to know what Neilsen's methodology is that determines exactly which platform a backwards-compatible console is running.

@Carl Chavez
How many of the PS3's sold in the US are backwards compatible? Isn't the current model in the US the same as in Europe with the crippled software emulation?

Has it occurred to anyone that PS2 and original XBox playing alongside the huge increase in retro gaming, whether on 'LIVE' services provided by console manufacturers, or on PC with DOSBox having had it's 5 millionth download in 2008 that we are seeing a revolution of gamer that are starved of good gameplay in modern games on modern machines and are therefore looking back to days gone by? To say modern games are better than games of 3+ years ago is a joke to my mind. With gameplay and entertainment value way higher in older games and with modern games just giving us great graphics and little else! prior to 2005 you just never heard of 15 hour gameplay games, let alone 12 hour and 10 hour gameplay games like we see now, for example! In 2008 sub 20 hour gameplay games almost became the norm - and yet retail prices never came down - making gaming the most expensive it had ever been!

@Christian:

Somewhat, but anybody with older model PS3s, like the 20-60GB models, still has decent (75% or more) backwards compatibility. That may or may not have a significant effect on PS2 play statistics if those games are counted as being played on PS2 hardware instead of PS3 hardware.

I don't know about that John. The price of games never went down because the value of the dollar did, due to a phenomenon known as "inflation". In real dollars, I'm not convinced gaming is the "most expensive it's ever been". I think old systems are still used so much to this day because we never really think about just how many people have these consoles.

If there truly are 140 million PS2s out there, and in spite of its unprecedented success, a mere 35 million Wiis, then it stands to reason that the vast majority of "gamers" just haven't gotten around to picking up a next-gen system yet, and are still playing their old systems. In addition, a lot of people who have bought newer consoles still go back to their old ones from time to time for the sake of reminiscing about the days of old.

I don't think any of it has to do with the quality of games today, because in spite of our nostalgia, I think gaming has gotten better with time. Some games may be a mere 8 hours, but how much of that is made up for with online multiplayer components that didn't exist last generation? And as for truly single-player focused experiences, I'd say they haven't lost any value over the years. Oblivion was every bit as worth its price tag as Morrowind, and Fallout 3 more than earned my $60.

No, I think the "problem" is just that we have a silent majority of gamers who, for reasons financial or other, haven't yet gotten around to purchasing a new console, and are still playing the old ones.

I'd like to see a closer study on that. It would be interesting to see how many of those gamers are planning to buy another console at all.

(my bet is: not so many)

My guess is that many, if not most, of them may not be planning to buy a new console, but they will eventually, once the price comes down, more games are available, etc.

All the people who own next-gen consoles now are early adapters, but it's a well known fact with tech trends that it takes a few years for the general public to latch onto new technology. I'd like to see this study again next year, and the year after.

It's a shame the discussion got sidetracked by partisan console issues; the list of most-played PC titles should be the biggest concern... and why it's NOT an eye-opener to the games industry. The Sims holding TWO positions on the list. RuneScape, a free game run by two guys from the UK. Diablo II, an EIGHT-year-old title. How would network TV programmers react if they found that Leave It To Beaver was the number-one most watched show last year? There would be BIG changes, is my guess. But the games industry never learns.