Game Development Community

Market research

by Marvin Hawkins · in General Discussion · 07/14/2005 (1:02 pm) · 5 replies

Hi all,

I've read a lot of game design and business books over the years. but now i'm trying to put together a business plan and I can't seem to find any industry stats any more. I'm looking for just general stuff not in depth report. Like the average game sales x units and the total take it made in yearly revenue. Are there any sites where i can find such basic info? I've tried those professional research sites. But I'm not really interested in that detailed data plus it costs..... so any free sites?
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Torque Owner Joshua Dallman
Default Studio Name
#1
07/15/2005 (4:15 pm)
This question has been asked many times before in the forums, and generally the answer is the same: it's tough info to find.

I would shrink the question and instead of a business plan look to do a game plan, a competitive analysis. Look at a small handful of games that are similar in genre and production value to yours and base your hypothetical sales figures on those. For example, for Shelled I am looking to games like Orbz and ThinkTanks to predict my sales figures, though estimate mine to be lower due to the not quite as high of production value in my game as those games, at least for version 1. If I was looking at the macro view of video games, casual games, or indie games, it would be impossible to sort out how many units I could expect to sell.

Torque Owner Tatjana
#2
07/16/2005 (3:27 am)
Something educative or instructional (nongaming) is a good place to get started.

What I'm working on is along this line.

Good Luck

Torque Owner Marvin Hawkins
#3
07/16/2005 (10:29 am)
Hmm good idea joshua. But how would I even get sales figures for a small cross section of games. Can I just ask the publisher/developer for general figures?

Torque Owner Jason Swearingen
#4
07/16/2005 (1:49 pm)
Generally you can find books on this type of stuff, you can go to your local library and ask your librarian where to get sales data, or a bookstore and see what they have.

A good rule of thumb is that if you cant find it on the internet for free, you can probably find it for pay in a bookstore.

Torque Owner Marvin Hawkins
#5
07/23/2005 (10:40 am)
True however i have kind of more or less found what i was looking for in white papers that the igda put out. I strongly recommend these to any indie because they discuss current trends in gaming and how it relates to our markets. The one on causual games is really good. So give it a look see its free.