Top PC Games, October 2011: WoW Grows Audience, Second Life Doubles Share, 3 of the Top 10 are MMOs

The Nielsen ratings service just updated its list of Top Ten most played non-browser PC games in the US, based on data gathered from application activity in 180,000+ homes, and there's several significant changes from last Summer. Here's the latest results, from October 2011:

Original chart copyright Nielsen

Nielsen's last list was from June 2011, which I blogged about here, and there's a number of notable shifts in October's listings:

• In October, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft significantly grew its audience share since June 2011, when it had 6.3% share and 28% of the total market percentage (or TMP). WoW lost nearly two million subscribers this year, so it's likely this growth on Nielsen is from new/trial users responding to Blizzard's advertising campaigns and change to its subscription model. (You can now play WoW for free up until level 20.)
• Three of the Top Ten are now MMOs: Along with June Top Ten holdouts WoW and Lord of the Rings Online is Dungeons & Dragons Online. Notably, the latter two are free-to-play. LOTRO has gained quite a lot of market share since the Summer, going from 1.35% share and 3.5% TMP in June to 1.98% and 4% TMP in October.
• Notable for Second Life fans and Linden Lab: SL nearly doubled its market share, going from .539% share in June 2011 (when it was ranked 11), to .96% in October 2011 (when it ranked 15 overall, reflecting not a decline in popularity, but new entrants to the Top Ten.) I got this data via Nielsen's Bradley Raczka, and it seems like independent confirmation of Linden Lab's claim, in August, that SL was growing its base of new users.

See all the Nielsen game ratings here. And for comparison, see Nielsen's June 2011 top PC games chart (and SL's status in it) after the break.

And yes, Second Life is not a game in the most narrow definition of the term, but from a consumer perspective, SL is generally played as an online game, and "Games" is the most appropriate market category Nielsen has to put them in.

Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

Very interested to see what December's Star Wars launch (today?) does to all of this - by about mid February that is; after people who like MMOs have decided whether or not SWs lived up to its hype.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Link to the data where SL is listed? In both the old and new articles, I'm only seeing the top 10 with SL data just plugged in by you with no reference.

Second Life stats are added by you with no link to actual data.

Are you reading off of a paid full report or is there somewhere else that lists SL specifically that I'm missing?

[Henry]

And that does not include OpenSim, which keeps growing and growing.
Also interesting would be the average time spend inworld.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Still wondering where to get the full report, will have to turn to Neilson I suppose.

In contrast, in April 2009, Second life was actually on the top 10, in fact number 2 rated at 1.584

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/nielsen-news/world-of-warcraft-playstation-2-most-played-in-april-2009/

A graph showing that full story over the last couple of years would be most interesting.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Did the total minutes played for Second Life change much?

[Hamlet Au]

"Link to the data where SL is listed? In both the old and new articles, I'm only seeing the top 10 with SL data just plugged in by you with no reference."

Like I wrote: "I got this data via Nielsen's Bradley Raczka". Since SL hasn't been listed in the top ten in awhile, if you're not press, you'd probably have to pay them for the full data.

[Dizzy Banjo]

This is interesting! Maybe could be a recession driven shift to 'cocoon' mentality, stay in and in theory spend less.. although that didn't seem to help much in 2008..

Could also be just a temporary shift due to changing models ( like the WoW thing ).

But it would be very interesting if this continued for a while.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Thanks, Hamlet. May do that if there's enough beef in the report besides a couple of "top" lists.

Last report I got was Virtual Worlds something or other breaking down the virtual goods industry. Oddly enough Second Life was not in there at all.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Note to people who've been predicting the impending demise of MMOs for as long as there have been MMOs:

You're still wrong.

[Ciaran Laval]

@Pussycat Catnap - Star Wars The Old Republic will be through the roof for the next few months, it is insanely popular at launch.

[Tateru Nino]

@Arcadia but some day they will be right, even if it is when the sun goes dark, or at the heat-death of the universe. Impending demise is easy to predict, if you're not very specific about the time-frame or the circumstances. I imagine that's why impending demises are such a common prediction.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

@Tateru Not predicting a demise, I think SL has some years left, but I can fine tune it.

If you go back as far as MUDs, through VRML, up through Active Worlds and There to SL, it's an old pattern. Main criteria being user generated content and spaces.

There is generally only one leader head and shoulders above the other. Sometimes two commercial virtual worlds can co-exist on the same level, generally not.

Can't offer you a timeframe, but I can give a historical answer ... any virtual world lasts as long as it takes for a better one to come along. Then Here becomes There.

If that day ever comes for us, it will be something that invents itself in a fresh way rather than share some of the flaws inherent in the design of SL. If it's "better", it will be immediately obvious.

[milos]

I really think Batman : Arkham City was the best game of the year. I enjoyed playing a lot of games this year, and a few stood out. (Skyrim, Skyward Sword, Gears of War 3) but I loved every minute of playing Arkham City. Half of the time I spent playing it, I thought I was Batman.