Data Analysis on Video Game Genre Popularity
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Introduction
As an avid video gamer, I was generally curious how some video games performed across the globe. At a quick glance on a piece of data on Video Game Ranking Site, I noticed Japan ranked Red Dead Redemption 2, an action role-playing game sitting on a record-breaking $725 million dollars opening weekend, was ranked 23rd. Only 1% of the 14 million units were sold in one of the largest video game markets in the world - what are the reasons behind this lackluster sales number?
Global Gaming Market Data Statistics
- The video games market 2020's expected 13 % growth to 90 billion US dollars from 79 billion from 2017.
- Asia Pacific reached a revenue of 51.2 billion US dollars making them the largest gaming market.
- There are 2.5 billion video gamers world wide and 150 million within the US. 50% of population and 60% of that population play games daily.
- Premium games generated $17.8 billion dollars, while Indie games generated $1 billion dollars in 2018.
- Video game industry's revenue is higher than any other in the entertainment sector.
Objective
Web scrape product data on VGChartz, and determine why some genres perform better in other regions.
Data scraped:
- Country
- Video game name
- Rank on Top Sales List
- Year released
- Genre
- Company
- Yearly sales
- Total sales
- Console
Python Packages used:
- Pandas
- Numpy
- Seaborn
- Matplotlib
Data Analysis
Which genre performs the best overall?
Role-playing genre outperforms the majority which is especially shown in the Japanese market.
- Action genre is equally as liked in all regions
- Shooter & Sports genre perform very well in the USA
- Racing genre performs very well in Europe
Which region targets the widest audience?
Japan has an audience with a wide interest into video game genres. In contrast to the other regions, 8 out of the 16 genres perform the best in Japan.
- Action genre performs the best in Europe & USA
- Role-playing genre performs the best in Japan
Which console performs the best?
I was able to derive further insights based on analysis of the popularity of each genre based by region.
- Playstation 4 outperforms most consoles
- Hand-held consoles performs better than home consoles in Japan
- Xbox performs the worst in Japan compared to the other regions
Decision Matrix
The above matrix represents the number of video game titles that have reached the Top 100 in all regions. Furthermore, two questions can be answered based on this:
- Which genre performs the best in contrast to other regions?
- Which genre performs the best in each region?
Insights
Originally I assumed that the popularity of genres would be similar amongst all regions, but invalidated due to:
- Handheld consoles & Role-playing genre contributing most of the Japanese video game sales
- Shooter & Action genres perform the best in the USA & Europe
Further Tasks
In the future, I would like to provide better business insights by:
- Using monthly data to determine seasonal trends
- Aggregating genres based on commonality
- Determining company's regional performance
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