Nielsen reveals top 10 PC games played in 2008

Posted Jan 2nd 2009 5:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Biz, FPS, MMO, Multiplayer, Modern Warfare 2, Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft

2009 is now firmly underway but some companies are still looking back to the past 12 months. One of those companies is Nielsen who is best known for their TV ratings system. Today the company announced their 2008 top 10 lists covering entertainment and ads in a variety of catagories. One of them was for the top 10 PC games that were most played in the US (the ratings were actually for activity for January-October 2008).

It's not a shock to learn that Blizzard's hit MMO World of Warcraft was the number one PC game that was most played according to Nielsen. The study claims that the game is played an average of 671 minutes a week, or just over 11 hours, per gamer. Nielsen also claims that every minute about .723 percent of all PC gamers are playing World of Warcraft, a massive number that blows away every other game on the top 10 list. A number of older games are on the list including the PC version of Halo and web browser based MMO RuneScape:

1. World of Warcraft
2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
3. Halo: Combat Evolved
4. The Sims
5. The Sims 2
6. RuneScape
7. Diablo II
8. Team Fortress 2
9. Counter-Strike
10. Counter-Strike: Source

Tags: call-of-duty-4, counter-strike, counter-strike-source, halo, halo-combat-evolved, nielsen, runescape, team-fortress-2, the-sims, the-sims-2, top-10-most-played-pc-games-in-2008, world-of-warcraft

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Halo is really the only one that surprised me on that list. Posted at 6:36PM on Jan 2nd 2009 by Reader

From Shacknews
"Unfortunately, Nielsen did not specify the methodology behind this year's results. In 2007, the firm based its list off an extremely small pool of participants, a mere 1200 gamers, which could explain the unexpected results. It is not known if this was changed for 2008. "Posted at 8:58PM on Jan 2nd 2009 by Einhanderkiller

WOW not a surprise.
TF2 neither.

Sims 2 kind fo shocking but believeable.

Halo OMGWTFBBQ? I think F.E.A.R is more played than Halo.

Diablo 2,Okay the game is that awesome but seriously how many LVL 100 characters with Epic Gear you need? PWNing Baal for the Over 9000 time can't be that addictive.

Posted at 11:34PM on Jan 2nd 2009 by Dr Jeckyl and Mr ESC.

Yeah me too....I mean if Halo 3 was there ok....but if we are on PCs...Halo:CE?? Damm...7 years or 8years now and still lives on !Posted at 2:49AM on Jan 3rd 2009 by rugrln

Yeah, I'm with EinhandKiller, there is no way anyone is playing Halo:CE that much. We've had way better FPS on PC for years before that came out. Even if it was a small group of people I'm surprised NOT to see the original Call of Duty on there. Hell, all my old clan mates still play it, and I don't blame that. That game kicked ass.Posted at 8:20AM on Jan 3rd 2009 by sicsided

The reason Halo:CE is so popular is because there's a multiplayer demo that's out and it's small (about 130MB) and doesn't require much to run on a PC nowadays. I know this because I occasionally play it too :DPosted at 9:49AM on Jan 3rd 2009 by Hashbrown Hunter

This is is obviously bullshit. No one played Halo upon release and there sure as hell not playing it now. If it was the Halo demo it would say exactly that, Halo demo.

The best measure of popular games played is Xfire, which has a huge demographic, not Nielsen.Posted at 12:53PM on Jan 3rd 2009 by born2expire

Halo is really damn surprising.

Diablo 2 being on the list is also shocking. Not as shocking as Halo though. Posted at 2:11PM on Jan 3rd 2009 by Strategy_Panda (The Sandwich Poisoning Crew)

I'm actually surprised @ TF2 being above CSS and CS...both game have more much more players every time I check Steam stats...Posted at 11:31AM on Jan 5th 2009 by Jakka ( The Order of Haters of Balance)