A recent report of the Nielsen Research Group showed that PlayStation 2 was the gamers’ favorite gaming console in 2008. The study collected data about how many minutes gamers around the world played on their consoles on average per week.

It seems that the so-called next-generation gaming consoles, including PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 didn’t manage to increase their overall popularity to the extent of Sony’s previous generation PlayStation.

However, some may argue that PlayStation 2 is still the winner in terms of all-time sales, with over 140 million units sold worldwide since it was released in 2000. According to the study, PlayStation 2 totaled 31.7 percent of overall gaming console playtime. This is almost two times more than Xbox 360, which came in second with 17.2 percent playtime.

It is interesting that Nintendo’s gaming console, the Wii, was bested by Xbox 360 and hauled in 13.4 percent, contradicting sales figures, which show that Wii smashed its competition, PlayStation 3 and the Xbox range, combined. Another striking fact is that, not only Xbox 360 bested PlayStation 3, but it was also the first generation of Xbox, which defeated Sony’s gaming platform by 2.4 percent.

The research group at Nielsen selected several households and then collected data about the time users spend playing on their consoles. A similar method is used in television businesses.

Nielsen showed a similar report regarding PC games that users play. With no much of a surprise, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft was the most played PC game with a stunning 10 hours of playtime per week on average.