Genre ratio and console volume graphics since the dawn of Videogames

Here are very interesting and well assembled graphics on the ratio per game genre and console volumes at any given time in the past 35 years. For the credits, the data was supposedly assembled by a certain NcikVGG. My educated guess is that he is related to the videogamegeek site where the data was scraped. Pay close attention to the comments below the graph, they are enlightening.

First question coming up after looking at the graph is where are the sales? Some good souls brought some information – I put what felt the most relevant here :

• Shooters (including FPS, 3PS, light gun games and all other types of shooter): 706M
• Platformers: 761M
• RPGs: 745M
• Sports: >1B

Have a look at VGChartz.com for the gritty grainy details.

Be advised :

• the prices were not corrected for inflation. It gives an idea of the importance of the genres but it is by no mean a precise picture.
• Valve does not release Steam sales.

My videogamegeek search shows there were asian game titles released in 2005 for the DOS platform. That might explain the spike the graph shows.

How much should this concern yourself?

Just how much are you involved in the gaming industry yourself? Knee deep like me I’d wager?

I was surprised by how much I was involved either by playing games or doing development work for the industry. What I find striking is that whether I like it or not, I’ve touched somehow to roughly 50% of the whole shebang. *Mind blown*. Here are some rigged versions of the platform graph with “my own” juxtaposed information and some comments.

Playing

• I was raised on the Colecovision that we kept renting – (Where is it in that graph by the way?). key titles: Zaxxon, Venture, lady bug.
• We played the NES way too much for our own good (according to mom) – been a fan of the Zelda and Metroid series since.
  I learned English playing Sierra`s quest (yes, including Leasure Suit Larry)
• My most important PC titles: The Ultima serie, Master or Orion 1 and 2, Master of Magic, XCom Terror from the Deep, The Wing Commander 1-4 + Privateer, The Sierra’s quest, Sid Meier’s Civilization and Colonization + Alpha Centaurii, Blizzard’s WarCrafts and StarCrafts.

Hacking

• I learned basic on the Apple 2E and Tandy1000 at about 10 years old. I must have written every program found in the Compute! magazine.
• I wrote a first game in the Apple 2E in grade school. It was a the pick 1-3 match(es) game, in graphics
• I’ve been involved with the writing of the FBX file format and the import/export plugins for Kaydara, which lead me at the Ubisoft Montreal technology team. A small team worked on an internal middleware animation engine which was used on various titles such as Myst 4, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, Far Cry Instinct, etc. The engine also ended up on some game boy advanced titles which I’ve lost track.
• Back in 2005, I wrote a PSP UMD menu editor for Sony. It was built as a 3ds Max plugin so it had a timeline and 3D primitives. Unsure if it really count for under as game related work but that was my little contribution for the PSP.

I used Pattern8 free tileable patterns.