Bane of our TV industry chronicling existence, Nielsen now wants to get into the business of tracking which video games our inactive, lard-ass-growing population is playing. Forget for a moment that Nielsen's ability to track TV viewing habits is archaic and skewered, and Nielsen/NetRatings' Internet traffic monitoring is operational at best — the media monitoring agency might finally have its act together.

Rather than relying on video game players – known, of course, for their extensive attention spans – to record the games they play and for how long, Nielsen is working with Sony to grab the data directly from Playstation consoles. Nielsen gets a new product to push to media buyers; Sony gets a new platform to sell ads against.

If only there were a way for Nielsen to get information directly from cable TV set top boxes and have, like, accurate viewer data.