Nielsen: 2008's most played console was ..

The Nielsen Company is best known for tracking television viewership, but its quantifying of what people spend their time doing doesn't end there. It also tracks console usage among its selected households, and, for 2008 (January through October, at least), the PlayStation 2 was played more than any other.

According to Nielsen's findings, PS2 accounted for 31.2% of all console usage minutes measured. Xbox 360 was a distant second with 17.2%, followed by Wii (13.4%), the original Xbox (9.7%), PS3 (7.3%), GameCube (4.6%), and "other" (16.2%). The fact that more hours were spent playing the original Xbox than PS3 is, well, surprising. PS2's dominance isn't; last we checked, there were 87.6 bazillion of them in the world (give or take a few trillion).

In terms of PC games, World of Warcraft unsurprisingly dominated the list, with players spending an average of 671 minutes per week playing it. Call of Duty 4 was a distant second, followed by Halo, The Sims, The Sims 2, RuneScape, Diablo II, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, and Counter-Strike: Source Valve.

Given the sheer number of PS2s out there, it's not really all that surprising that the console was played more than any other. However, it is a bit surprising that the PS3 was rated so low; it fell behind the original Xbox. In terms of PC games, it's worth noting that the list is dominated by older games, without a single 2008 release cracking the top 10