Wasn't that report the average amount of time people had spent playing TP, not the average playthrough? As in the amount of time the disk had actually been in the console and running. In which case I'd say it's safe to assume that the average playthrough of the game is far shorter than this 48 hours as not many people will stop playing before at least one playthrough and many more continued on for multiple playthoughs.
Yeah I think that's right. I would guess now that it probably is less than 48 hours, but I can't say for absolute certainty. In addition to the many variables that would increase the time there would be the possibility that someone never played the whole game so that could bring it down. For instance people who played their friend's game for a couple hours or rented it once and never finished it. So I guess my point is that it is highly likely that the average person spent less than 48 hours on TP. Now that you pointed that out, I realize that the 48 hours can't be compared to the number I came up with.
Completing Skyward Sword in just story or 100%?
I looked over the thread again and it's a mix of both. So I have no idea.
Content is everything in a game. That means everything from story to side-quests, which SS had plenty of. TP lasts about 40-50 hours in a 100% runthrough. SS's story alone is about 35-40. Overall, it takes most people about 70-75 to complete the game in its entirety.
Sorry, now that I think about it again this isn't so different from what I would say the range is. I apologize for being so harsh before, but I just strongly disagreed with your original post that SS has nearly twice the content of TP. If I had to guess the average length of of a TP 100% run is probably about 43 hours, SS story alone is about 35 hours, and SS 100% is about 65 hours. So I'd say on a first playthrough a TP 100% run is almost certainly longer than a SS story only run, but a SS 100% run is probably between 1.15 and 1.65 times as long as a TP 100% run. This really is inexact though. The times reported in that thread I used had a range of times from 29 to 138 hours for first playthroughs of SS. IIRC there were first playthroughs of TP over 100 hours as well.
I'm really biased on the short side of SS though because I'm on pace to finish the game in under 15 hours on my 3rd playthrough. Plus my first playthrough of TP actually took longer than my first playthrough of SS, and that was with a guide for TP (partially), without a guide for SS, and I was much closer to 100% on SS. Time to completion is really dependent on the player. But I do think it's basically inarguable that SS doesn't have at least as much content as TP on basis of it being the newer game alone. They wouldn't have put less material in the new game than in the predecessor. It's weird though that TP does have many measurable aspects that are "greater" than SS such as number of dungeons, items, heart pieces, and provinces. Still SS has more overall content.