[casual_games] The "Churn Rate" of the top 10 lists is reallystarting to increase

[Margaret Wallace]

James: Your  <http://www.game-sales-charts.com/>
www.game-sales-charts.com  kicks butt!
 
This research confirms my overall impression that titles are churning at
a much higher rate than ever before. So with production costs supposedly
rising and more time/effort being put into polishing a game -- what does
that say about diminishing returns on investment? 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of James C. Smith
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 4:16 PM
To: 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
Subject: [casual_games] The "Churn Rate" of the top 10 lists is
reallystarting to increase


About 6 months ago I wrote an article
<http://www.igda.org/casual/quarterly/1_2/index.php?id=5> in the
<http://www.igda.org/casual/quarterly/1_2/> IGDA Casual Games SIG
quarterly about the history and trends in the Real Arcade weekly top 10
sellers list.  The part that I found most interesting was the "Churn
Rate" that measured how many different games passed through the weekly
top 10 list each quarter.  When the article was written, the churn rate
was just starting to increase.  That increase has been magnified in the
last two quarters.  Here is an updated "Churn Rate" chart

 




Real Arcade
Weekly Top 10 List
Churn Rate
Quarter	 Unique Games In Top 10	
2003 Q3	 24	
2003 Q4	 23	
2004 Q1	 25	
2004 Q2	 25	
2004 Q3	 24	
2004 Q4	 27	
2005 Q1	 25	
2005 Q1	 32	
2005 Q2	 33	
2005 Q3	 37	
2005 Q4	 40	
 

To put this into perspective, the minimum value here would be 10 if the
same 10 games stayed in the weekly top 10 list for the whole quarter.
The maximum possible value is 130 if there was a completely different
top 10 list each of the 13 weeks with no game reappearing for a second
week.

 

You can always get the up to date version of
<http://www.game-sales-charts.com/cms/index.php?option=com_dbquery&Itemi
d=33&task=ExecuteQuery&qid=17> this chart at
<http://www.game-sales-charts.com/> www.game-sales-charts.com  

 

I am sorry it isn't very fancy looking  since maintaining this web site
is just a part time "hobby" of mine with no revenue stream, but is real
data that I find very interesting. I hope you find it useful .

 

PS: If you looked at this "Churn Rate" chart on the web site in the past
couple months you may have noticed it was wrong.  It was reporting 26
weeks in each quarter.  I corrected that bug today and now the web site
shows the accurate number I am reporting here.

 

James C. Smith

Producer / Lead Programmer

Reflexive Entertainment 

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