Consumer Trends 2007 Released

Gamasutra reveals the Consumer Trends study for 2007 has been released. The unsurprising finds: WoW and Sims are tops in software. The slightly more surprising find: last-gen consoles still dominate.

The Nielsen Company has released its year-end findings on the top consumer trends among Americans in 2007, spanning everything from music downloads and TV programs to ring tones and consumer purchasing trends, and revealed that, among its top ten trends in console and video gaming, that World of Warcraft is the top PC title, and PlayStation 2 the top gaming console.

The lists, ranked by average user playing per minute, revealed that the average WoW user plays for 1023 minutes per week, with the number of users outpacing the rest of the list by nearly seven times. Users of the second-place title, The Sims, play for 298 minutes per week. The third-place title is Jagex’s RuneScape, whose users play for 688 minutes per week.

According to Nielsen, 42.2 percent of all time spent playing consoles is allotted to the PlayStation 2, putting it in the decisive lead among consoles. The original Xbox, in second place, receives about 13.9 percent of gamers’ console time, while third-placer Xbox 360 receives 11.8 percent of the usage minutes.