The video game market as a whole is growing, but...

[Bodhesatva]

Good examples, Mummel. There really are a bunch of ways to break this down.

For example, we could divide it geographically: in Japan, for example, the "hardcore" market (largely defined by jRPGs) has either been stagnant or even in decline for the last decade.

Another example would be Fighting Games -- blockbuster series like Tekken, which sold 4-6 million in the early 90s, are now struggling to crack 2 million. Street Fighter III sold profoundly less well than SF II did. Soul Calibur III did less than half its predecessor.

An example of relative stagnation would be football games; the Madden-head crowd doesn't seem to have grown for 5 years now. We see some jumps and dips in sales from year to year (this year is down, but I wouldn't be surprised if next year we saw a jump back up, due to random fluctuation) but overall Madden has been selling 5-7 million with consistency for a while now.

RPGs in general also seem to be stagnating in sales; Final Fantasy is down slightly worldwide, noticably so since the release of Final Fantasy VII. Suikoden has been selling 200k-300k for a decade. Dragon Quest is up slightly, but still has never gained traction anywhere but Japan. Overall, virtually no growth in the genre for some time now.

Some "hardcore" markets are up, though; I think it's fair to say, without any analysis in here, that the FPS market has grown dramatically on consoles over the last 5 years. One might even apply this more broadly to shooters.