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07 Mar
Posted by shadejon as Card Games, CCGs, Classic Board Games, Miniatures, Modern Board Games, RPGs, War Games
Purple Pawn checked over 8,400 companies who make money from analog, tabletop games from across the globe to see if they were still operating. We conducted our annual survey of over 7,700 operating companies to see how they performed in 2012 and received 212 responses. You can download the 17 page report for free here [PDF].
Summary
Over the course of a year, around 4.7% of the companies in our DB closed. Single-game game companies closed at twice the frequency than that of other companies.
We received 212 responses from 22 countries and 29 US states. 2012 apparently was much like 2011 and 2010. Of those companies that didn’t close, the overwhelming majority are doing fine or even better than last year – only 15% report doing worse than last year.
Among the responding retailers, the top performing game lines from last year – Magic: The Gathering, Catan properties, Dominion games, Ticket to Ride games, and Warhammer properties – were the top again this year. Dominion did not score quite as well as Catan did this year; last year they were neck and neck. Pathfinder products outperformed Dungeons and Dragons products by 2 to 1, just as they did last year. Cardfight: Vanguard was the best new performer.
To participate in future surveys, send your name, company name, website address, and email address to shadejon@gmail.com .
I was skeptical about one observation in the report: “Amazon.com doesn’t list Monopoly in its top selling games.” In fact, when I checked today, Monopoly appears as #54 among Best Sellers in Games and has been in the top 100 for 2796 days (over seven years).
Thanks, Paul. I should have been more specific. I asked for the top five game lines from each company, and Monopoly is not in the top five at Amazon. That it’s not even in the top twenty is remarkable.
Also note in the report where I wrote: “Mainstream game sales are driven by brands and licenses” should read “Mainstream game sales are often driven by brands and licenses”. Many mainstream games are developed and targeted by their mechanics.
I apologize for my overreach.
Yehuda