Game Co.

GameCo. A video game company would like to use data to inform the development of new games.
For this project I perform a descriptive analysis of a video game data set to foster a better understanding of how GameCo’s new games might fare in the market.

  • GameCo, a video games company would like to use their data in order to inform the development for new games, as well as to allocate their budget accordingly in order to maximise return on investment.

  • As a marketing analyst, I was tasked with performing a descriptive analysis of a video game data set to foster a better understanding of how GameCo’s new games might fare in the market.

  • Create and present a presentation that includes visualizations telling the analytical story to key stakeholders (VP Marketing, CFO, Senior VP of sales)

  • Are certain types of games more popular than others?

    What other publishers will likely be the main competitors in certain markets?

    Have any games decreased or increased in popularity over time?

    How have their sales figures varied between geographic regions over time?

  • Historical sales of video games (for games that sold more than 100,000 copies) spanning different platforms, genres, and publishing studios. Source: VGChartz and link

Data Management

01. Data Cleaning

Each dataset was checked for data quality measures and consistency. Data was additionally cleaned and transformed in order to merge relevant data sets - ready for exploration.

02. Data Exploration

With the cleaned dataset, I looked at identifying trends, and patterns, and used pivot tables to transform, group, and segment the data into manageable pockets of information to collect insight.

03. Data Analysis

Here I worked through a series of hypothetical challenges facing GameCo. and decided which type of analysis to pursue in response to each challenge and applied the techniques of understanding distribution to the project data set.

Insights & Visualisation

In order to get a better idea as to how we could advise on budget, we looked at forecasting market sales as a percentage of global sales.

Sales projections looking forward assist in guiding us on which markets need marketing assistance and which markets can be optimised for success.

Market Share

Contrary to company expectations, sales across North America, Europe, and Japan did not remain consistent and saw a decline from 2009 onwards.

Having a look at market share per region as a percentage of global sales we can establish a few things:

- From 1992 to around 2001, the market share was relatively inconsistent.

- From 2001, market share stabilized and, although spread unevenly, each region's performance remained relatively consistent.

- From 2010 onwards, each region starts performing inconsistently (decrease/increase market share).

Regional market share is shifting and the buying power in the EU is becoming stronger than that of North America. Japan is also experiencing relative growth and should not be isolated within the market.

Genre & Platform Perfomance

Both genre and Platform preferences showed drastic changes in preferences in 2016 as opposed to the previous years' trends. This data helped tremendously in understanding where investment was required in terms of game genres and platform optimization.

Forecasting

Recommendations

** To view the final project deliverables click here

  • On average from 2008 onwards, sales have been in decline, however, market share has shifted & we recommend an adjustment in strategy & budget in light of this information.

  • We also recommend ensuring that games are optimised for PS4 as a platform as this seems to be the preferred platform as indicated in 2016.

  • The marketing strategy needs to be revised for this market. I would suggest not increasing the budget before fully exploring whether it is the strategy/approach or a budgetary issue that is causing this response. Optimize first and then adjust the budget.

  • We expect the EU to contribute 40% of sales in 2017 & budget should be adjusted in accordance with this. We recommend focusing on Shooter, Sports and Action Genre as the demand for these are increasing within this market.

  • Be sure not to isolate Japan’s platform preference in the marketing plan. The role-playing genre still holding steady, an increase in Action could indicate a new market opening up. Budget allocation should be set aside for this.

  • Other region's market share is staying relatively consistent, with steady growth - I would suggest monitoring before altering strategy/budget.