New York - Sony's PlayStation 2 accounted for 42% of U.S. video game console usage during June, and PC gamers played Blizzard Entertainment's "World of Warcraft" more than four times as much as any other PC game during the month, according to the first data from Nielsen's new GamePlay Metrics service. The service combines electronic ratings and survey data from over 12,000 households to show who is playing games, on which systems, at what times; Nielsen also plans to establish a metric that can be used for buying and selling ads in video games. Some 68.1 million Americans used a video game console in June, playing an average of 7.5 days during the month. Behind the PlayStation 2, Microsoft's Xbox claimed 17% of consumer usage, followed by Xbox 360 (8%), Nintendo GameCube (5.8%), Wii (4%) and PlayStation 3 (1.5%). "Other" consoles, including the vSmile, Sega, FC Twin, and Game Wave accounted for 21.3% of usage. On days they played, Xbox 360 users logged an average of 2.2 sessions, with an average session length of 61 minutes, compared to the PlayStation 3, whose users logged an average of 1.9 sessions averaging 83 minutes in length. Following "World of Warcraft," which announced yesterday that it passed 9 million subscribers worldwide, U.S. PC gamers favored "Halo: Combat Evolved," "The Sims," "Halo 2" and "RuneScape" last month.

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