76,760,000 - Wii Sports [1]

14,500,000 - Halo 3 [2]

12,000,000 - Call of Duty:Black Ops [3]

6,370,000 - Gran Turismo 5 [4]

800,000,000 - Face Book [5]

31,000,000 - Farmville [6]

940,630,000 - Total of above

Have a look at those numbers, big ain't they. Over inflated, not representative of how many people really play/use them or even brought them. But those big numbers are still big, and it would be far more belittling with actual sales and usage with what I'm trying to get at.

As humans we all have a tendency to loose perspective on the bigger picture. Were all guilty of it, even me. Its made worse by the Internet. Now I like video games and I like using the Internet. But the Internet, for all its vast size, wealth of data and number of users, often encourages very small thinking. I don't mean that in derogatory way, no I mean, well what site are you reading this on? We are on a website about video games populated by a user base of video game enthusiasts. We don't exactly represent ‘most’ people now do we. But there’s nothing wrong with that, no quite the opposite. Its great that through the Internet, community's of like minded people can get together and talk about stuff they have similar interests and like.

But look at the comment sections on any games site, even better the whole recent CoD verses BF3 stuff that infected allot of discussions. Its depressing to think some people actually believe what they are saying. Now I know I'm generalising. I know that there is a massive difference between what people say and what people do. I know that the Internet reacts very disproportionally to reality and then blows it all even further out of proportions. But the principle of what i'm getting at still stands.

Video game company's are in the business of making money. Big or small the bottom line is cold hard cash. Publicly held company's show this the most, EA & Activision are the best current examples. But even ‘Indy’ studios are, would Edward McMillen, a guy who’s work I remember fondly from the early days of Newgrounds, been able to make the recent Binding of Isaac if Super Meat Boy failed financially? Don't answer that, but the fact that he’s been able to make money means he can make more games for a living.

But at the same time its not black and white. As much as we all like to simplify things, they rarely are. There are too many factors involved in everything for it to be as easy as that. Indy dev’s are still just as likely to make more games if they don't make money, for a love of making games. But to say all would do this would be a lie, people need to be able to afford to feed them self remember. Then look at the large public players. EA takes large losses on several franchises, I like Dead Space but the franchise is being propped up by EA. Activision’s numbers rely heavily on Blizzards success with WoW, when you look at the company's financial reports, to someone uneducated in accounting, it seems like Activision’s contribution is minor. Yet we still have a new CoD that's sold ‘record breaking’ numbers.

Then we have the new kid on the block ‘social games’. A whole new minefield of opinions. Personally I think there is a bubble which is going to bust and affect allot of people. But they are still games enjoyed by many, far more people than ‘core’ games. But when you have the weight of the large public company's starting to buy in heavily, as well as start-ups popping up almost daily. It just makes me think ‘Nah, ain't gonna work’. There will be allot of games enjoyed by allot of people, but the balance ain't there yet for the number of consumer to producers, and its going to need the pain of a bust to make it sustainable.

But that opinion of mine is soiled by my own perspective. I don't play social game frequently, when I have they never caught me. As games they were fine, but not for me. My parents play them daily though, so I understand people enjoy them so I don't completely write them off. Even worse, the two paragraphs above that are jaded by me being a consumer of allot of games, a great many that aren't brought by most people. By having no role in any of those company's/developers and just consuming there products, who am I to make such statements?

7,000,000,000 - Roughly the world population [7]

940,630,000 - only 13.445% of world population

Look at that percentage. And that's comparing population with numbers that are larger than day to day reality. And its still not allot really.

Don't dis-pare though. Enjoy what you like, talk about what you like, complain about what you don't. Just remember though, money is often the decider, and we are a minority.

1. Nintendo fiscal report for end march 2011 - http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2011/110426e.pdf

2 . Wikipedia, no reliable source cited, said number is just over double of sales as of 2008 from other sources - http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6184291.html

3 . A very sketchy source, but biggest i found. - http://au.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/call-of-duty-black-ops-escalation/news/6312133/call-of-duty-black-ops-sells-20-million-analyst

4. The developers own list of shipped sales - http://www.polyphony.co.jp/english/list.html

5. active users - http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

6. rough number users per month - app data - http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/102452128776-farmville

7. Roughly the world population as of 2011/2012 - http://ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

http://www.worldometers.info/

http://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=world+population