Video Game Sales Report

35 years of global video game industry data — Python data cleaning, franchise grouping with fuzzy matching, and a 4-page Power BI dashboard across 16,596 titles.

An analysis of global video game industry trends over 35 years (1980–2015), covering 16,596 titles with over 100,000 sales records to uncover insights into consumer preferences, market dynamics, and franchise performance.

Key Findings

Insight Detail
Industry growth 5.9% average annual growth; sales peaked at $678M in 2008
Post-peak decline 11.1% YoY drop after 2008
Publisher concentration Top 20 publishers = ~80% of total $8.73B revenue
Genre consolidation (2011–2015) Action, RPG, Shooter, Sports = 72.7% of sales
Japan platform shift Handheld surpassed home consoles after 2005
Top franchise avg. revenue Nintendo $3.76M · Bethesda $3.60M · EA $3.43M

Analysis Process

1. Data Ingestion & Cleaning

  • Loaded the Kaggle/vgchartz dataset of 16,596 games into Python
  • Used fuzzywuzzy to group game titles into franchise series
  • Unpivoted regional sales columns and consolidated 31 platforms into Console, PC, and Handheld
  • Filtered inconsistent release years to ensure data quality

2. Data Transformation & Modeling

  • Created aggregated metrics: sales by year, region, genre, platform, and franchise
  • Calculated CAGR, market shares, and growth rates for key segments
  • Built franchise-level summary tables to evaluate publisher strategies

3. Power BI Dashboard

  • 4-page interactive report with cross-filtering: Sales Trends, Regional Breakdown, Genre & Platform Analysis, Franchise Performance
  • Tooltips, slicers, and drill-down for stakeholder exploration
  • Executive summary report with strategic recommendations

Tools

Python fuzzywuzzy Power BI Excel