What Wii owners are playing most

By Ellie Gibson Published 24 June, 2008

US stats make for interesting reading.

New stats appearing on the US Nintendo Channel have revealed what Wii owners prefer to play - and for how long.

The Nintendo Channel is available in Europe too, but the stats only appear to be accessible via the American version. According to Kotaku's calculations, Wii owners spend a whole lot of time on Guitar Hero III - racking up an average total playing time of 53 hours and 28 minutes. Each person who owns the game has booted it up 30 times on average, and in total six million gaming sessions have been logged.

Next up is Wii Sports. The average time spent playing the game is 33 hours and six minutes, and owners have played the game 28.3 times. More than 21 million gaming sessions have taken place, and 24.7 million hours of play have been racked up.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has been booted up an average of 9.9 times by everyone who owns it. They've played it for 4.1 million hours in total, or an average of 21 hours each.

At the lower end of the scale, Okami, Carnival Games and Wii Fit have all been played around 5.7 times by their owners. Okami wins out when it comes to average time spent playing - 14 hours 25 minutes, compared to just over 9 hours for Wii Fit and nearly eight hours for Carnival Games.

The figure for Boom Blox stands at 8 hours 25 minutes, and it's only been booted up 3.8 times on average. What a shame. It is good!

Stats are also available for WiiWare games - Final Fantasy: My Life as a King is apparently most popular, with an average play time of 11 hours and 46 minutes. Visit MTV multiplayer for more exciting WiiWare-related maths fun.

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (23) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • asphaltcowboy #1 4 years ago

    These are stats since the Nintendo channel was released, right? They must be, surely?

  • BadBoyBonner #2 4 years ago

    GH3 booted more times than the pack in game? Hmmmm, not so sure about these "stats".

  • Darren #3 4 years ago

    How does this Nintendo Channel work... is it similar to Xbox LIVE in that it tracks game usage while online or does it require the user to input data manually?

    /is confused

  • BadBoyBonner #4 4 years ago

    I feel quite confident in predicting that there are less than half the Wii's sold connected to the net.

    And that a large percentage of those that are not connected were bought by people who purchased the console on the strength of Wii Sports alone.

  • MisterFalseName #5 4 years ago

    I'd be interested to hear about Wii Fit - does it include people who just boot up the channel in those stats? I'd guess not. Afterall, if you weigh in each day then you should play it daily in theory...

  • gingerlink #6 4 years ago

    surprised Metroid Prime is so high, especially if this is since the channel went up. You'd think Galaxy would be somewhere there as a result..

    @BadBoyRunner
    and/or Wii Fit

  • Madafunkola #7 4 years ago

    I agree with the scepticism. I know a fair few people who bought the Wii just for Wii Sports/Ravin Rabbids/Wii Fit and the like and those people didn't even know it had any online abilities. My brother however, a bit more tech savvy, online, plays Metroid, SMG and PES. THEREFORE, the people "participating" with this "survey" will be the harder-core end of the wii-spectrum.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #8 4 years ago

    I'm so pleased to see Carnival Games being such a success. It's really well done, low priced, and has been a big success despite next to zero hype, marketing or media coverage. (And what there was was littered with "hardcore" snobbery about it not being a "proper game", like EG's own lazy 5/10 dismissal.)

  • Landmaster #9 4 years ago

    I'm sure Carnival games is shit.

  • rhubarbandcustard #10 4 years ago

    My wii catalogue consists of:
    wii sports - played maybe three times in total and,
    Boom Blox which has been played 20 times or more - multi-player only.

    The wii is the worst console of all time. If it wasn't for Boom Blox i would never use it at all.

    I remain hopeful that WiiWare may save it but they need to sort out the storage problem for dlc.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #11 4 years ago

    As already mentioned, the problem with those numbers is that noone really knows how to interpret them. When did the tracking start and more importantly what consoles are actually reporting those numbers?

    I wouldn't be surprised if there's quite a lot of Wiis out there that aren't even connected to the internet and also quite a few that are but haven't downloaded the Nintendo channel yet (or opted not to report gaming habits).

    I think that there's a good chance that the gaming habits are different between those who actually connected their Wii to the internet and those who don't. Some of the party games might be more prominent on Wiis used by 'casual' players (as much as I hate the term).

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #12 4 years ago

    I'm sure Carnival games is shit.

    I'm sure YOU'RE shit.

  • Killerbee #13 4 years ago

    I'm actually not that surprised to see Guitar Hero doing so well - it's certainly one of the games I go back to the most. I doubt it's quite surpassed Zelda: Twilight Princess for total time, although I haven't booted that up since I completed it.

    Okami and Wii Fit are still quite new games, so it's not really a fair comparison, is it?

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #14 4 years ago

    Wiis log how much time you spend playing all your games, anyway. It send you messages detailing daily play time lengths, and keeps them, as far as I can tell, so it should have seen how much games hhave been played since the console was bought.

    As far as only tracking consoles that have been connected to the internet goes, though, that's certainly true.

  • canIdoyabombsforya #15 4 years ago

    "I remain hopeful that WiiWare may save it but they need to sort out the storage problem for dlc. "

    Nintendo store the games for you. If you need to play 11 or more per day just delete one and re download another.

    oh, something tells me the Wii doesnt need WiiWare to save it as a gaming paltform.


  • Loser #16 4 years ago

    @ Mentalist(air)

    You also have to give explicit consent for your data to be submitted to Nintendo....

  • Bleh #17 4 years ago

    "The figure for Boom Blox stands at 8 hours 25 minutes, and it's only been booted up 3.8 times on average. What a shame. It is good!"

    I order this game because a lot ppl say it's really great. Let's hope I don't get disappointed.

  • oerhoert #18 4 years ago

    I never understood what was so great about Boom Blox. Surely Mercury Meltdown was a lot more interesting, and Kororinpa a lot more fun?

  • Pac-man-ate-my-wife #19 4 years ago

    Played it?

  • siro #20 4 years ago

    Boom Blox play time is surely so low because it's newer than the channel itself. Overall I'm surprised to see play times that high, even though the maximum play time registered for a user per day is supposed to be capped at six hours.

  • Rizzle #21 4 years ago

    What a shame.

  • OrgasmicMutton #22 4 years ago

    People on average spend 14 hours playing Okami?

    I've played it for exactly that and I've been wandering around so much exploring and doing good deeds that I've only done 1 (what seems to me) proper dungeon. It's lovely and I can easily see me taking more than 50 hours over it.

    Also I shudder to think how many hours of Mario Kart was played on my Wii especially when everyone in my flat was supposed to be studying for exams!

  • brokenkey #23 4 years ago

    you can pretty much complete boom blox in that time, so its not surprising. Should never have been a full price game.