TOP SALES BY PLATFORM
For this final section, I examine if sales on different platforms support or contradict the takeaways I made in prior sections. The three most consistent console manufacturers are Nintendo with their various platforms, Sony with the Playstation series, and Microsoft with the Xbox, and while each of these companies has a current generation console, since they are not found in the data I will not be addressing them. It is also worth noting that while PC should be considered its own platform, it is heavily underrepresented in the data so I will be grouping it with Microsoft.
This is a breakdown of how many games in the list were released on each platform. The red are Nintendo consoles, the blue are Sony, and the green are Microsoft, and they are shown in order of release. There were a few other consoles in the list, but I chose to omit anything with less than 50 games in order to not influence the analysis with excessively small sample sizes. Some of these omissions were from these big manufacturers and some are from manufacturers like Sega and Atari that are no longer relevant. I will be focusing mostly on newer platforms, but first want to look at sales performance across them all.
Because I established that in recent years, the average sales figure for a game in any genre is at least 1 million, this table shows the amount of games for each console where that figure was met or exceeded, in ratio with the total number of games from the previous list. I also included the total game unit sales as a percentage for each console as a reference.
Looking at the ratios I provided, some consoles stand out with a high portion of their catalog being successful. For example, of the 63 games included in this data for "GB," the Nintendo GameBoy, roughly 84% of them sold more than 1 million copies worldwide, and its total unit sales nearly exceed that of its predecessor from Nintendo, despite having 28 less games included here.
This ratio is clearly not the sole determining factor for success, though, because in a case like the PS2 vs the PS3, the PS3 has a slightly better ratio but the PS2 has 76 more games that broke the million barrier and is the only console here with more than 1 billion game unit sales. Instead, I believe the ratio is more representative of the idea that some consoles carried many games that did not sell well, which could have played a role in the shift in genre popularity I discovered in the previous section.
​
Strangely, Nintendo consoles display both the highest and lowest ratio of high selling games, as well as some very low total unit sales. This seems to conflict with their dominant appearance in the industry I showed in previous sections. It is apparent from this that while they have produced immensely successful games, they also experience periods of stagnation. One potential example might be the GBA console, as nearly 200 games with only 232 million unit sales compared to the GB console I mentioned before, with 63 games and 246 million unit sales, shows a much lower sales rate on average per game.
​
In order to examine this idea more closely, I first need to focus in on the newest consoles for each company to see if the current trends match those found in my previous analyses. In this data, these are the Sony Playstation 4, and the Microsoft Xbox One. Nintendo's latest console is the Wii U, but there are a very low number of games listed in the data for it despite having 3 years of production, so I don't think it is fair to include it.
At this point I want to note that Nintendo does have a newer console than the Wii called the Wii U, but less than 50 games from this console are included in the data despite the fact that it released in 2012. I think that this is a potentially misleading underrepresentation, so I focused on the PS4 and Xbox One for the following analysis.
But now, I looked at both of these modern consoles in greater detail, using the previous sales and genre analyses to determine how old trends are carrying on to the current generation of gaming.
First, I looked at the average sales for each year of the platforms' lives to see if there was a discernable trend. It seems that the age of a console does not have a terribly significant impact on its sales, but especially not a negative one, as generally both of these examples show small growth over the 3 year period.
Next, because the PS4 has higher average sales than the Xbox One, I wanted to see if titles that released on both platforms continue to reflect that. Since both consoles released at the end of 2013, I took the games from that year as there is a smaller amount of them, making for a more digestible comparison.
​
It is very evident that the PS4 was more successful as a console on launch, as it delivered more copies sold for every single game in the data that was also released on the Xbox One. A developer in 2014 could then consider publishing with Sony on the PS4 in an effort to boost their sales if they are relatively unknown.
Lastly, I chose to look at the genre dispersion across both consoles in an attempt to confirm my suspicions about underserved markets from the prior analysis. This data supports that certain genres are slowly fading away in popularity, as not a single Puzzle, Simulation, or Strategy game had been released for either of these modern consoles by 2015, and most of what is being released fall into the categories that I labeled as most popular. Additionally, the Xbox numbers are lower than the PS4's in almost every category, which suggests that more games are releasing on the more popular console, and this is confirmed by the total games listed before.
I think this doubles down on the idea that these markets without representation offer great opportunities for new developers to cultivate a consumer base. For example, fans of Puzzle games wouldn't stop enjoying them entirely just because they aren't being released, so creating a new one designed for either or both of these new consoles could tap into a market that is starved for new product.
CONCLUSIONS FROM PLATFORM ANALYSIS
At this point in the project, the trends I am discovering are starting to line up with my previous analyses. Looking at consoles throughout time, there have been spikes and declines in popularity amongst consumers, similar to how different genres garnered varying amounts of attention over time. Additionally, most of the games released on the most modern consoles are reflective of the trends in sales by genre over time, so it is clear that game developers are aware of what is popular and many are choosing to lean into that angle.
​
For the modern market, the PS4 has yielded greater numbers than its competition, but the trends are nearly identical between the two main players in sales growth as well as genre distribution. This means that when choosing a platform to create their game for, a developer has the option to strike an exclusivity deal if there are notable benefits, or they could release on both platforms to reach both audiences, and neither platform would give them a meaningful advantage if they were developing a specific genre.
​
This lack of restriction seems to support the conclusion that platform does not have as great of an impact on a game's success as the other factors at play, as the trends are still entirely aligned with my previous observations.