Average Days Played

Again, as with yesterday’s fun fact, these numbers do not reflect the most played games on the Xbox, as measured by the raw number of people playing them. These are the games that have been played for the most TIME. The MMO takes the top spot, but who is next?

Shooters! Thank goodness, at least one stereotype lives to fight another day. The next three slots on the list belong to shooters. COD4, Halo3, and Gears of War. If you check my own Xbox profile, you’ll see Gears of War figuring prominently. (I, however, am not the reason for that. You see, my better half was trying to teach me to enjoy shooters, an endeavor he had utterly, epically failed to accomplish on the PC. When we got the Xbox, he tried again. “Use the… do the… here, let me show you.” Somehow that turned into him playing GOW while I watched. I’m not going to date myself by telling you WHICH games, but suffice it to say I was getting flashbacks to high school. The graphics are way better now.)

Fifth, sixth, and seventh place for “most time invested” go to… football. And I don’t mean American football, which didn’t even crack the top ten. Given how much money that American football games have made for their overlords (and you have to see EA’s main campus to believe it, yowzer), I find it fascinating that in terms of sheer devoted time, soccer is the dominant sport. I had heard that soccer is infinitely more fun to play on a console, and it looks like the usage data bears this out.

Oh, and if you’re interested, the descending order of the three titles was thusly: Pro Evolution Soccer 6, FIFA 08, and Winning Eleven X.