jchen64581 / video_games_ea.github.io

Video Game Sales Analysis using MySQL

Exploratory data analysis on video game sales.

About Dataset

The dataset is sourced from kaggle which contains a list of video games with sales from 1980 to 2020. The dataset has 11 columns and 16598 records. I decided to drop records with null values in order to make the result of the analysis more accurate. In addition, I split the dataset into two related tables based on the principle of data normalization - the "game_info" table contains the basic information of the game, and the "game_sales" table contains the sales records of the game in various regions.

Using Temporary Table

Since we will need to join both tables multiple times to perform analysis, I would create a temporary table for resusiblity purpose. Using temporary can make the query a lot shorter and also speed up the runtime to increase efficiency.

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE game_sales_temp
SELECT
    i.game_id,
    name,
    platform,
    year,
    genre,
    publisher,
    na_sales,
    eu_sales,
    jp_sales,
    other_sales,
    global_sales
FROM game_info i
JOIN game_sales s
	ON i.game_id = s.game_id;

SELECT * FROM game_sales_temp;

Let’s take a look of the completed dataset

Denotation of each columns:

• game_id- unique game id
• name - The games name
• platform - Platform of the games release (i.e. PC,PS4, etc.)
• year - Year of the game's release
• genre - Genre of the game
• publisher - Publisher of the game
• na_sales - Sales in North America (in millions)
• eu_sales - Sales in Europe (in millions)
• jp_sales - Sales in Japan (in millions)
• other_sales - Sales in the rest of the world (in millions)
• global_sales - Total worldwide sales.

Data Analysis

1. Find the top 3 most popular platforms in terms of counts of games.

SELECT 
	platform,
    COUNT(name) AS num_games
FROM game_sales_temp
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 2 DESC
LIMIT 3;

• DS, PS2 and PS3 are three dominant platforms globally

2. A specific game can be played on multiple platforms, find games which were played on more than 5 platforms

SELECT 
	name,
    COUNT(platform) AS num_platform
FROM game_sales_temp
GROUP BY 1
HAVING COUNT(platform) > 5
ORDER BY 2 DESC;

• There are 133 games were played on more than 5 platforms
• 'Need for Speed: Most Wanted' is the game that played on most platforms

3. report the genre with the most global sales for each platform

WITH cte AS(
SELECT
	platform,
    genre,
    ROUND(SUM(global_sales),2) AS total_sales,
	DENSE_RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY platform ORDER BY ROUND(SUM(global_sales),2) DESC) AS rank_sales
FROM game_sales_temp
GROUP BY 1,2)
SELECT
	platform,
    genre,
    total_sales
FROM cte
WHERE rank_sales = 1
ORDER BY total_sales DESC;

4. Find the top 3 video games that have the most sales for each genre

WITH cte AS (
SELECT
	genre,
    name,
    ROUND(SUM(global_sales),2) AS total_sales,
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY genre ORDER BY SUM(global_sales) DESC) AS sales_rank
FROM game_sales_temp
GROUP BY 1,2
)
SELECT * FROM cte WHERE sales_rank <= 3;

5. Find the percentage of global sales amount for each genre

SELECT 
	genre,
    ROUND(SUM(global_sales),2) AS total_sales,
    ROUND((SUM(global_sales)/(SELECT SUM(global_sales) FROM game_sales_completed))*100,2) AS 'sale%'
FROM game_sales_temp
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 3 DESC;

6. Find game type prefernces for each region

SELECT
	genre,
    ROUND(SUM(NA_Sales),2) AS North_America_sales,
	ROUND(SUM(EU_Sales),2) AS Europe_sales,
    ROUND(SUM(JP_Sales),2) AS Japan_sales
FROM game_sales_temp
GROUP BY 1;
-- ORDER BY 2 DESC #most popular game in North America
-- ORDER BY 3 DESC #most popular game in North Europe
-- ORDER BY 4 DESC #most popular game in North Japan;

• Action game is the most popular game type in both North America and Europe
• Role-playing game is the most popular game in Japan

7. Find publisher whose sales greater than the average global sales of all publishers.

WITH cte AS
(SELECT
	publisher,
    ROUND(SUM(global_sales),2) AS total_sales
FROM game_info i
LEFT JOIN game_sales s
	ON i.game_id = s.game_id
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 2 DESC) 
SELECT 
	publisher,
    total_sales
FROM cte
WHERE total_sales > (SELECT AVG(total_sales) AS avg_sales FROM cte);

• There are total 39 publishers have total global sales greater than the average global sales of all publishers.

8. Find the year with the most games released for each genre

WITH cte AS(
SELECT
	genre,
    year,
    COUNT(*) AS num_games
FROM game_info i
LEFT JOIN game_sales s
	ON i.game_id = s.game_id
GROUP BY 1,2
ORDER BY 1,2)
SELECT
	genre,
    year,
    num_games
FROM cte
WHERE (genre, num_games) IN (SELECT genre, MAX(num_games) AS most_releases FROM cte
							 GROUP BY 1)
ORDER BY year;

• We can see all genres have most sales during the period of 2003 - 2009.

9. Find the year, number of games and their names that sold more than 15 million worldwide. Sort the game name lexicographically.

SELECT
	year,
    COUNT(DISTINCT name) AS num_movie,
    GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT name ORDER BY name SEPARATOR ', ') AS 'movie(s)'
FROM game_sales_temp
WHERE global_sales > 15
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1;

10. Report the total number of video games that released in in each decade, exclude the 20s

SELECT
	ROUND(SUM(CASE WHEN year LIKE '198%' THEN global_sales ELSE 0 END),2) AS num_80s_games,
	ROUND(SUM(CASE WHEN year LIKE '199%' THEN global_sales ELSE 0 END),2) AS num_90s_games,
	ROUND(SUM(CASE WHEN year LIKE '200%' THEN global_sales ELSE 0 END),2) AS num_00s_games,
	ROUND(SUM(CASE WHEN year LIKE '201%' THEN global_sales ELSE 0 END),2) AS num_10s_games
FROM game_sales_temp;

• Consecutive years from 2002 - 2011 are the top 10 years that have the most sales, peaked in 2008.

11. Which region performed the best in terms of sales?

SELECT * FROM game_sales_completed;
SELECT
	ROUND(SUM(NA_Sales),2) AS na_sales,
    ROUND((SUM(NA_Sales)/SUM(global_sales))*100,2) AS 'na_sales%',
    ROUND(SUM(EU_Sales),2) AS eu_sales,
	ROUND((SUM(EU_Sales)/SUM(global_sales))*100,2) AS 'eu_sales_ratio%',
    ROUND(SUM(JP_Sales),2) AS jp_sales,
    ROUND((SUM(JP_Sales)/SUM(global_sales))*100,2) AS 'jp_sales%',
    ROUND(SUM(Other_Sales),2) AS other_sales,
    ROUND((SUM(Other_Sales)/SUM(global_sales))*100,2) AS 'other_sales%'
FROM game_sales_temp;

• North America has the half of the global sales