Archive project · foundational work
Video-game sales — GameCo
GameCo's executives assumed regional sales had stayed flat over time. A descriptive analysis of global video-game sales tested that assumption — and gave the studio a genre and region strategy to act on.
Why it mattered
Overturned a false “sales are flat” assumption and replaced it with a genre-and-region playbook — pointing GameCo's development and marketing spend at where consumer taste is actually moving, not where it used to be.
351M→23M
NA units sold, 2008→2016
Shooter
top genre across regions
Nintendo
#1 publisher in every region
3 of 3
regions in decline
01The questions
- Which genres drive the most popularity, and where?
- Who are the primary competitors across regions?
- How have sales patterns actually evolved over time?
- What regional differences exist in consumer taste?
02What I found
- Shooter and Action dominate globally; Sports and Platform are strong in North America and Europe, while Role-Playing games resonate most in Japan.
- Sales declined across every region from 2008–2016 — North America fell from a 2008 peak of 351M units to 23M by 2016; Europe 184M → 27M; Japan 62M → 14M.
- Nintendo leads publishing in every region, with Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard the main competition in the West.
- The assumption of flat regional sales was wrong — the real story was market-wide decline and shifting taste.
FIGThe market fell across every region
North AmericaEuropeJapan
03Recommendations
- Prioritise Shooter and Action development, with Sports/Platform as broad-appeal secondaries.
- Run region-specific marketing: Shooter/Action in North America, Sports/Action in Europe, and RPGs with local partnerships in Japan.
- Study Nintendo, EA and Activision Blizzard positioning to inform GameCo's own.
04Tools & method
Microsoft ExcelPivot tablesSorting & filteringDescriptive statisticsData visualisation