Video Game Sales Analytical Assignment
Added on 2020-03-23
6 Pages3197 Words101 Views
|
|
|
Video Game SalesAnalytical Approach for Video Game Sales and User CriticsAuthor: _______________
AbstractThis paper focuses on sales analysis for video games as at 22nd December 2016. This analyticalapproach compares the sales of various games and genres on different consoles in NorthernAmerica, European Union and Japan. Hypothesis testing techniques for two independentsamples have been used to test for means and proportions. Keywords: EU – European Union, JP – Japan, NA – Northern America, USA – United States ofAmerica, PS4 – Play Station 41INTRODUCTIONVideo gaming has been one of the most popular forms of entertainment in thecontemporary world; with software developer focusing sports, car racing and moviesto create fascinating games. These games have also been categorized into differentage groups, with some having age limits to avoid disruptions on social norms andregulations. The licensing bodies ensure that the developers have acquired the relevantrights to release their games. However, the hard task has been left to the society toensure that the children are not left unmonitored to engage on video games that arenot categorized into their age groups. Besides all these restrictions on who should playthe game and when they are played, the video gaming industry has been seen to thrivevery well in the last two to three decades ago. The emergence of video games hasbeen boosted by the improvements in technology because they are can be installed onpersonal computers, smartphones and consoles. In this analytical paper, we will focuson games that are only played and licensed on gaming consoles. Some of the mostpopular consoles include Play station, Xbox 360 and Wii U among others [1]. The use of the various consoles across the continent depends on the marketdomination which is determined by the location of the company. For instance, Sony’sPlay Station console might dominate in Northern America because the producers anddevelopers are located in the USA. Also, customers might prefer to purchase consolesthat are developed by most popular companies [2] [3]. However, this might not be thecase because it depends on the tastes and preferences of the customers. On the otherside, the game genre is mostly influenced by the likes and tastes of an individualperson. People who love watching football games such as Manchester United andArsenal fans would be interested in sports games than car racing. The type ofmentorships a person receives and the predilection of certain phenomenon such asembracing and liking sports cars can be among the set of determinants. In this paper,we will statistically prove the most popular gaming console and game genre. Also, wewill review the users score on the games based on the genre and the respectiveconsole. These research question will be answered using the video games sales dataobtained from Kaggle website [4].1.1HYPOTHESISa)H0: There is no difference between NA and EU on Play Station 4 consolegame sales.HA: Play Station 4 console games sell more in NA than EU.b)H0: There is no difference in Sales or video games played on Wii U consolein JP and EU.HA: Video games on Wii U console has higher sales in JP than in EU. c)H0: Games with sports genre have the same sales in EU and NA.HA: Games with sports genre does not have the same sales in EU and NA. d)H0: There is no difference on critic score shooter and sports video games. HA: Shooter video games have higher critic score than sports. e)H0: Proportion of user score ≤50 = Proportion of user score >50.HA: Proportion of user score ≤50 ≠ Proportion of user score >50The hypothesis will be tested using 5% significance level and the analysisconducted using the R-programming software. 2DATA PROCESSINGAND EXPLORATIONThe video game sales dataset has 16 variables and 16,719 observations. Thevariables and the data types are displayed in the table below. Table 1: Variable names and their corresponding data types $ Name : Factor w/ 11563 levels $ Platform : Factor w/ 31 levels $ Year_of_Release: Factor w/ 40 levels $ Genre : Factor w/ 13 levels $ Publisher : Factor w/ 582 levels $ NA_Sales : num 41.4 29.1 15.7 $ EU_Sales : num 28.96 3.58 $ JP_Sales : num 3.77 6.81 $ Other_Sales : num 8.45 0.77 $ Global_Sales : num 82.5 40.2 $ Critic_Score : int 76 NA 82 80 $ Critic_Count : int 51 NA 73 73 $ User_Score : int 79 1 82 79 1 1 $ User_Count : int 322 NA 709 192 $ Developer : Factor w/ 1697 levels $ Rating : Factor w/ 9 levels The data types will be manipulated to fit the required analysis such transforming therating variable form factor into an integer. 2.1DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICSTable 2: Table showing descriptive statistics for the continuous variables.VariablenMeanSDMedianMinMaxRangeSeNA Sales167190.260.810.080.0041.3641.360.01EU Sales167190.150.500.020.0028.9628.960.00JP Sales167190.080.310.000.0010.2210.220.00Other Sales167190.050.190.010.0010.5710.570.00Global Sales167190.531.550.170.0182.5382.520.01Critic Count813726.3618.98213.00113.00110.000.21Critic Score813769.9713.947113.0098.0085.000.15User Score1671946.4639.47611.0097.0096.000.31User Count7590162.23561.28244.0010,665106616.44There are some missing data for the critic score, critic count, user score andcount. The average statistics for the sales measures are below one because most of thegame had a sale value below than 1. Based on the median values, we can prove thatthe sales data was skewed to the right with most games selling below the threshold of1.
2.2DATAVISUALIZATION2.2.1SalesFigure 1: Year of game release against sales in NAFigure 1 shows that there are some outliers on the sales levels in NA with fewgames selling above 10. More sales were experienced between 2001 and 2013. Figure 2: Year of game release against EU salesGame sales in EU were highest between 2004 and 2013, with most of the videogames selling below 5. Comparing figure 1 and figure 2, it is evident that video gamessell more in NA than EU. Figure 3: A plot for year of Game release against JP salesGame sales in JP seem to have poorly performed all through as compared to EUand NA. Between 1983 and 1994, the sales had minimal outliers; however thedistribution changed thereafter with more games having sales above 2. This shift ledto the steep skewness of the data to the right with other games selling more than 4. 2.2.2Game Scores and CriticsFigure 4: Histograms for critic & user scores and countThe critic scores of the games were slightly skewed to the left with a mean ofaround 70 with the scale running from 0 to 100. Based on the score rating, the averagevalue of 70 indicates an overall poor performance of the video games. The critic countof the games is highly skewed to the right with fewer games receiving more than 60users making negative comments about the games. Most of the video games havecritic counts between 0 and 30, with the highest frequency being above 2000 criticsfor counts between 10 and 20. The user scores between 0 – 5 had a frequency of above 6000 and 2000 for thosewho rated the games above 95. Therefore, around half of the game users rated thegame below 5% and above 95%. Around 50% of the respondents rated the videogames between 25 and 90% [6]. 3HYPOTHESIS TESTING3.1PLAY STATION 4 CONSOLEHASLOWEROREQUALSALESIN NA COMPAREDTO EU.Figure 5: Histograms of NA, EU and JP Sales for PS4 Console gamesBased on figure 5 above, the PS4 console games sales data for NA and EU is notapproximately normal, hence leading to the use of Wilcoxon sign rank to test thehypothesis.
End of preview
Want to access all the pages? Upload your documents or become a member.