EEDAR (Electronic Entertainment Design and Research), a research firm focused solely on the video game industry, was founded in 2006 and now services with its data collection (the firm holds the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of video game facts and information) almost every major publisher and developer in the industry.
EEDAR hosted two interesting presentations at GDC 2016. The first one, called Awesome Video Game Data and presented by EEDAR's Co-Founder and Creative Director Geoffrey Zatkin (previously a game designer on Everquest I, Everquest II and The Matrix Online), is now available here. For the purposes of this article, we've extrapolated some of the most interesting highlights.
For instance, the firm estimates 20 million units sold for Microsoft's Xbox One as of December 2015. This is particularly interesting since Microsoft has decided not to release unit sales for a while, instead opting to release other figures, such as monthly active users.
A similar estimate was shared by VGChartz, though according to their data Xbox One reached 20 million sales in the week of February 13th, just over a month later than EEDAR.
There are many more interesting facts in the presentation, though. For instance, the quantity of game releases on Valve's Steam have more than doubled from 2014 (1,500) to 2015 (almost 3,500). That's in all likelihood to the explosion of Steam Greenlight, where almost every title is accepted within a week; there's a fair argument to be made that all of these games may do more harm than good, with several users calling for a stricter approval process.
According to EEDAR, this generation is also ahead of the last one when it comes to sales when removing Nintendo's consoles (Wii and WiiU, respectively) from the equation.
About 60% of the North American population is made by gamers, with an average age of 35 years and a male/female split of 55%/45%. The eSports prize pool also increased twofold from last year, going from approximately $35 million to over $70 million.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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