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EEDAR's founder Geoffrey Zatkin did the annual EEDAR data presentation on the games industry and consumer habits. Here are the notes from GameDev.net (no articles yet)

Trends

• Gamers are entertainment consumers on every possible medium
• 65% of US population are game players
• Who games?
• 48% of population in 2016
• Households on average have 2 consoles

Platforms

• Wii most popular platform over 100m units
• 50M PS4’s
• 85m Xbox 360 and PS3
• 3DS 65M
• Core consoles in current generation (8th) - (w/out Nintendo) - are outselling 7th generation
• There is a shift from a balanced portfolio of genres to a more core focused portfolio of shooter and action genres. Casual genres slowing trend.

Genres

• Mobile most popular: Puzzle, Arcade, Strategy
• Console most popular: Action, RPG, Shooter

Mobile

• Most gamers play games on a variety of devices
• Different games depending on device available or time
• Most people upgrade phones 18-24 months
• Average smartphone 6 months to 1 year old
• Android fragmentation making market sizing difficult - variety of device power and not all games can run on all devices
• North American mobile market is maturing
• Fewer new device owners entering market
• Gaming population increasing faster than hardware adoption
• 155 million mobile gamers in 2016

Large percent of mobile gamers owning more than one device generate revenue

• 51% own more than one mobile device
• 60% of revenue

Virtual Reality

• More VR units in mobile
• High end VR (PSVR, Oculus, Vive) making most revenue
• Critical mass of VR hardware is building - enough to begin having a profitable VR ecosystem

Demographics

• Average age of gamers in US 2016: 35
• Age distribution:
• ​Less than 18 yrs old - 27%
• 18-35 yrs old - 29%
• 36-49 yrs old - 18%
• 50+ yrs old - 26%
• Mobile market payers also shifting older y/o/y - 37 yrs old 2016 vs 32 2014
• 60/40 ratio of male/female gamers
• More women playing games longer than people think
• Men tend to play PC (64%), Women tend to play mobile (55%)
• 55% women pay in mobile

Distribution

• Barriers to create games of quality have never been lower, yet retail console, handheld, PC title releases in 2016 lowest it’s been
• But when we consider Retail and Digital distribution - most ever.
• 6500 games released for console, PC, handheld
• 4600 games released on Steam in 2016
• 2015 - 3400 games
• 2014 - 1500 games
• More games on Steam last year than the entire console, handheld, etc.
• No more physical-only released games in consoles - digital distribution always included
• Number of games released by publishers has decreased
• Massive consolidation in top tier publishers, more stringent, less risky
• 50% drop in games released by publishers since 2012

Financials

• $16.5 billion industry in US
• ~1/3 of revenue coming from mobile
• Mobile payers defined as less than $100 per year spent average of $43 in 2016
• Heavy payers defined as over $100 spent average of $310 in 2016
• Population of heavy payers has increased
• More people in category, but less per average
• 7% of mobile gamer population brings in 55% of mobile revenue
• Heavy correlation between people who play and people who pay
• Top 50% of games generate 99% of revenue
• Top 10% of games generate 60% revenue
• Top 2% of games generate 30% revenue
• 12% of retail titles have generated 75% of retail revenue since 2012

Discoverability and Behavior

• Average review score in industry is 69 - below 80 which is the cutoff in consumers for “good enough” game
• Most games receive a score in 70’s
• Advertising matters. Without good marketing you may do well but never as well as you could and usually substantially less.
• Direct correlation between review scores and sales.
• Those who market get ~2x in sales. Discovery is the biggest issue for developers.
• Top factors affecting discovery
• ads in apps, games, social media
• social sources
• ads on website
• storefront charts/featured
• Price and Genre key factors affecting engagement
• User reviews, theme/graphics, recommendations are top factors. Storefront elements (featured, top spot, trailers) bottom factors.
• Players leaving the game - key factor was general loss of interest/boring
• Might leave for a better user experience.
• Perspective is very important in your game
• Top factors: had to pay real money to progress/complete, game was not what expected.
• Western plays are okay with spending money to progress quickly despite stigma in paying to play
• Top 5 most played genres
• brain puzzle
• matching puzzle
• skill and chance
• casino

Kickstarter

• 29,216 successfully funded projects
• $600 million to games
• $535m successful
• $53m unsuccessful
• $5.6m live dollars
• Some using kickstarter as a marketing opportunity or to engage commnity earlier
• ~1/3 successfully funded
• This year so far, 76 games > $1million. 3867 games $1k to 10k, most popular funding level
• Kickstarter getting more difficult, especially as more finished games enter
• 67% of unsuccessful get < 20% funded
• More than half the games on kickstarter got no significant money

Pokemon Go

Virality - more than 1/3 heard of game from friend. App Store 5%

Images from Twitter