Analysis
February was a surprisingly big edition. With over 1160 points of data, this month was about 23% bigger than the January Edition. Needless to say, there were big increases all around.
The leading platform this month was the Wii U, as with last month. What may be surprising is the margin by which the Wii U comes ahead. The PlayStation 4, with it's vastly larger upcoming library of 3rd party hits, is over 100 points behind. Even accounting for the generally larger month, the Wii U still managed to eat roughly another 2% of the point total. There was no large announcement that caused this increase. In some cases, already known titles like Hyrule Warriors actually scored worse this month than last month. A few existing titles, however, managed to score big.
The star of this feature at the moment is the Wii U exclusive "X." It gained 27 points month over month, and currently has about 9% of the point total. Other big winners on the Wii U included Super Smash Bros 4, which gained 32 points, Mario Kart 8, which gained 31, and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, which gained 17. Both Zelda games, Hyrule Warriors and the next main entry, lost points, but this was made up for by Watch Dogs, Ubisoft's biggest sku this month.
In second place comes the PlayStation 4 . It's three biggest skus were Infamous: Second Son, Uncharted, and Final Fantasy 15. Considering how two of those games lack release windows, it is unlikely that the platform will falter as much these next few months as the Wii U will. The PS3, meanwhile, remains a potent force, not far behind its successor. Two of the top 10 skus are for PS3 exclusives, and a total of nine PS3 games scored at least 10 points. These included a bevy of JRPG's, including Final Fantasy, Persona, Dark Souls, and Tales.
The Xbox made a notable jump month over month, about 40% higher when combining the two consoles. That said, the One was by far the more notable platform, and actually had a high-ranking exclusive in Halo 5. For context, Halo 5 on the One got more points than any other shooter sku save for Uncharted. With Titanfall being in second place, it seems that the Xbox remains a haven of shooters.
The PC saw a dramatic increase in points month over month: over 60%! Strangely, it was largely already announced games like Titanfall, South Park, and The Witcher 3 that led the charge. On the handhelds, meanwhile, excitement has been gathering over upcoming RPG's like Bravely Default and Final Fantasy X HD. However, as these games will soon be released, their future is uncertain.
Genres
Other than the program I used to make spreadsheets, my main new addition to the feature this month was assigning each game a genre. It wasn't a perfect system, but I feel it shows some interesting things.
First, note the popularity of the JRPG, both as a percentage of the point total and compared to its Western cousins. X by itself is bigger than every WRPG charted combined. Furthermore, it is far from alone. Eleven other JRPG skus scored 10 or more points, many of them on the PS3. Although the second largest, Bravely Default, is coming out in America in about a week, it will likely be partially mitigated by the announcement of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. And even if it isn't, the JRPG would need a catastrophe to lose the 50% or so of its relative point total necessary to drop a place.
The other two big genres are the Action-Adventure and the Shooter. Action-Adventure is something of an "etc" genre by its very nature, but a few titles stand out. Infamous: Second Son, Metal Gear Solid 5, and Watch Dogs are all big names in the genre at the moment. Note though that other than Infamous, none of these titles can be considered "huge." Shooters, meanwhile, are not nearly as popular as they're made out to be on VGChartz, scoring only about a third of the JRPG score.
In general, the following platforms lead in the following genres.
PC - WRPG's
PS3 - JRPG
PS4 - Action-Adventure
Wii U -Less Popular Genres (Racing, Fighting, Platformers, etc.)
Xbone - Shooter
