What is a real market study of a PC / Consoles video game?

Market research for a video game provides an overview of its commercial potential in relation to the buying habits of consumers (gamers). The aim is to quantify the number of people likely to buy your video game.

Market analysis is a measurement tool to reduce the risk of failure of your game. By simulating market placement (test marketing), our study can indicate as realistically as possible the chances of success in the pre-production phase.

What the studios call "market research" is not market research.

Studios usually confuse market research with competition research. Market research aims to determine the number of people who are really interested in your product. Competitive research is used to determine the technical, artistic and financial characteristics of competing games. To find out what the market as a whole thinks of PC / console game projects, studios generally use two methods. 

One of them is to create a presentation page for the game on Steam with the aim of encouraging users to add the game to their wishlist. There are two major problems with this method. The first problem is that you assume from the outset that your market is PC-only. The second problem is that this method does not provide you with clear information about the characteristics of your buyers (age and gender for example). This information is essential if you want to boost your sales through online advertising.

Another method is to create a page on a crowdfunding platform. For a new studio, creating a crowdfunding page is a risk. Crowdfunding requires the aggregation of a community before the start of the campaign. A great deal of communication and marketing effort is then required. If you fail, how do you convince an organisation or company to finance your video game?

BigWhoop studies the market for your PC / Console video game from the pre-production stage

The BigWhoop agency has developed its own measurement method to carry out real market research for PC and console games during their pre-production phase. We use real data and scientific studies to predict the success of the game. Our method is divided into 3 key steps.

The first step is to identify the features expected by your market. This identification stage involves an analysis of competing games and, in particular, of the comments left by players (more on our competition study).

A second step concerns the production of media (images or videos) highlighting these features within the art direction of your video game. These media are distributed on several social networks to a limited number of users.

A third step which aims to measure the conversion of users from social networks. We create a temporary web page (landing page) in the colours of your video game. This page allows us to collect the contact details of people who are really interested in your game.

Bonus Stage : The data from our market research allows us to determine the interest of users for your video game from the pre-production phase. This data also allows us to determine the marketing costs necessary to reach your break-even point according to the financial characteristics of your game (production costs and sales price).