When selecting a market to bring a game into, a game developer or publisher should consider many different aspects.
These include (but are not limited to):
- Some platforms being more popular in a selected country or region (e.g., the primary markets for console games are USA, Japan, and Western Europe)
- Size of the audience in dominant language markets for your type of game
- Cultural norms and features, as well as censorship restrictions in the target market
- The success of previous games in those specific markets
- Income per capita
- Legal matters like personal data processing regulations (which differ from country to country)
What could also help to streamline the market selection process is understanding which game genres are preferred and where.
Studies show that in any country action-adventure games and shooters remain the most popular genres on PC and consoles. Same with variations of MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games). Games from other genres have been gaining popularity too: recently this has included MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) and battle royale games.
Further research by AppAnnie, cable.tv, Statista, and WePC indicates that, for example:
- In the USA the most popular genre is action (preferred by 26.9 percent of the players)
- Germans like playing simulators (e.g. metro sim)
- Japanese like playing dating simulators and games about robots
- Social gaming app Hago is particularly popular with Gen Z (gamers born between 1995-2010, following millennials) in Indonesia
- In Poland, more than 50 percent of all players played puzzle games in 2019 on a smartphone or tablet. About as many gamers used consoles for racing games
Now, you can choose a few games of the same genre as yours and see which top languages they’ve been localized into and which countries they are present in.
Of course, it’s just something to start with. Nimdzi can perform research about localization and culturalization for your specific case, genre, and prospected market.
Nimdzi Finger Food is the bite-sized insight you need to fuel your decision-making today.
