Last week, on the first part of the genre diversity series we looked at Playstation 4 (PS4 Genre Diversity). This week, we are doing the same for Microsoft’s XBox One.

A Short History of Source Data

The data consists of genre info for all games released in XBox collected from different sources (Steam, Metacritic to name a few).

To make the visualization readable, we are using two dimensional matrix, which means a title can have multiple entries in count. Example: Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris’s genre is Action,Adventure,Platformer, so it will appear in Action-Adventure, Action-Platformer and Adventure-Platformers cells in the grid.

One title can have multiple entries due to diversified genres

Matching classes (e.g. Action-Action) refer to any game which does not have any other two genre combination.

The analysis is based on all the games released from 1st January,2016 to 1st June,2017.

Now off with the analysis.

Analysis

Not much words required for analysis because visualizations speak louder than words. Below is the Genre Diversity Matrix for XBox One games with 15 genres covered.

Unsurprisingly, Action and Shooter dominates which is the norm from the beginning of 3D era

From the heat map above, it is apparent that XBox One is dominated by Action and Shooters genres with all red categories contain Action as genre. Similar, trends were observed in case of PS4.

Unsurprisingly, Action-Adventure leads wit 111 entries with Action-Shooter trailing close with 107 entries.Action-Platformer is next with 81 entries in last one and a half years. This three categories topped in case of PS4 also.

Outside of action categories, Strategy titles lead with 49 entries with pure adventure titles next with 38 entries.

So far, genre diversity in XBox One seems in line with Playstation 4 except for one glaring category- RPG. This is mainly down to lack of Japanese style RPG in XBox One. During the analysis period, PS4 saw release of 31 Japanese-style RPGs whereas XBox One saw only 2.

During the analysis period, PS4 saw release of 31 Japanese-style RPGs whereas XBox One saw only 2

Filtering the Worthy

So, generalized view gave us nothing we didn’t already know. But does the same heatmap holds true for the play-worthy. To consider a game play-worthy, we set the rule that it must score 75 or more metacritic critic score.

Yes, the shooters and adventures still lead but the dominance is not that acute. It also gives us an indication on which genre of games has better chance of being good.

There is >80% probability of getting a low quality game for most genres if you go to purchase without prior research

If you go to a purchase an Action-Shooter or Action-Adventure game on XBox One without any prior research, the probability of having a play-worthy title is 25% and 23% respectively. It goes on to show the flood of low quality games in the market trying to capitalize on the popular genres. Same goes for Action-Platformer which has the probability of 22%.

Racing-simulations fare better with 35% probability probably due to the niche market and customers being more prone to research on nitty-gritties. Some quality action-RPGs are in XBox One with 1 in every 3 titles ranked as play-worthy.

Strategy titles did better on XBox One with 24% entries found play-worthy compared to PS4’s 16% but still a tad low number.

Racing-simulations fare better with 35% probability probably due to the niche market and customers being more prone to research on nitty-gritties

End Notes

To sum up, XBox One and PS4 had similar level of diversity in recent types with XBox One only lagging behind in Role Playing Games mainly due to lack of support from Japanese developers. Additionally, The worthy matrix reveals that it has now become imperative to research before you buy a game due to slew of cash-grabs and low quality products flooding the markets.

That’s it for today. Stay tuned and keep on commenting and sharing your views.

You can also keep up with our previous five-parter series Consoles in Numbers by visiting the links below: