I'm slowly but surely gathering information for an in-depth look at how third party titles have done on the five current generation platforms worldwide, and how the figures are trending for a big article...

A couple major caveats here for some perspective:

In the previous generation:

EA sold over 200 million games on PS2 (at least 13% of all PS2 games)

Sony sold over 100m games on PS2

Take Two / Namco-Bandai / Square-Enix / Activision sold over 50m games (each) on PS2

...and we are / may be missing undertracking alot of these figures as total PS2 sw in the data base adds up to 750m or so out of about 1512m.

Nintendo (69m) and Microsoft (35m) games did fairly well too. But overall, PS2 Xbox GC was a 2.0b sw market by sw shipments, of which 1.8b was for third parties.

Currently Wii PS3 X360 software totals roughly 1.25b (through June 2010) by shipments...

Nonetheless, total software on the three consoles to date goes like this:

Nintendo - 253.8m (Aug 1 ltd)

EA - 152.m (Aug 1 ltd)

Activision - 128.2m ("")

Ubisoft - 76.8m (""")

Those are the big kahunas, accounting for 5% or more of all console sw this generation. Take Two, Sony, and Microsoft are also over 50m but below 5% (62.5m). 

Broadening the scope a bit, these are the 10m third party markets by system for the ten major third parties (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, THQ, Take Two, Sega, Capcom, Konami, Square-Enix, and Namco-Bandai).

Wii > 10m :  Nintendo, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, THQ, Sega. Konami is pretty close but not there yet. Some other third parties - like Lucas Arts, Disney, or WB Int may be close too, but I haven't checked.

PS3 > 10m: Sony, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Take Two, Sega, Konami. THQ and Capcom are pretty close to 10m but not there yet.

X360 > 10m: Microsoft, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Take Two, THQ, and Sega. Capcom is pretty close, but not there yet.

PSP > 10m: Sony, EA, Take Two, Capcom, Konami, Namco-Bandai.

DS > 10m: Nintendo, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, THQ, Sega, Square-Enix, Namco-Bandai. Konami is pretty close but no there yet.

As a graph, you can see it like this -

>10m     EA    Activision    Ubisoft   THQ    Take Two     Sega  Capcom   Konami   Square-Enix    Namco-Bandai

Wii         Yes      Yes              Yes        Yes          No             Yes          No          No            No                       No 

PS3         Yes     Yes               Yes        No          Yes            Yes          No          Yes           No                       No

X360       Yes     Yes             Yes         Yes         Yes            Yes          No           No           No                       No

DS          Yes       Yes             Yes         Yes         No             Yes         No           No            Yes                     Yes

PSP         Yes      No              No           No         Yes            No          Yes          Yes            No                     Yes

Where this gets interesting is that lifetime to date, the software markets (by size) can be ranked as : DS, Wii, X360, PS3, PSP. Not surprisingly, seven of the ten major publishers have sold over 10m games on DS, and Konami will join them next month. On Wii, only five of the ten publishers are over 10m, but Konam and Take Two will be well over 10m on Wii by the end of the year due to Carnival Games / DDR / Def Jam Superstar. Namco-Bandai / Capcom will probably get to 10m on Wii eventually but I dont think its happening in 2010. Square-Enix is no where near 10m on Wii and may not get there even with DQX. For X360, all the major western publishers and Sega have topped 10m on X360. On PS3, the same is true, except Konami replaces THQ as the provider of big sports games (soccer vs. wrestling & mma). For PSP, the genre kings from the PS2 are over 10m but no one else - Take Two (GTA - Sandbox genre king), Namco-Bandai (anime king), EA (Western sports king), Capcom (Monster Hunter / Action king), and Konami (JA / EU sports king).

Setting the standards a little higher, we find that four third parties have topped 20m on Wii (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, and Sega), four have topped 20m on X360 (EA, Activision, Ubisoft and Take Two) six have topped 20m on DS (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, THQ, Sega and Square-Enix), two have topped 20m on PS3 (EA and Activision),  and EA has topped 20m on PSP.

At 30m games, we begin to enter rarified air - but numerous companies have done it.

> 30m Wii Games - Activision, EA (Ubisoft / Sega are close)

> 30m X360 Games - Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Take Two (no one else may make it the way it looks now)

> 30m PS3 Games - Activision, EA (no one else is close, but Take Two probably gets there with more GTA games)

> 30m DS games - Ubisoft (EA still has a shot, but its a ways from happening still)

> 30m PSP Games - Nobody but Sony.

For > 40m, we have Activision on X360, and EA on PS3 / X360. Ubisoft is very close on DS. EA, Activision, and Ubisoft may get here on Wii by the end of 2010.

What do you all think? All figures are through August 1

So last gen, all 1st party software was only about 10% of the market.

This gen, Nintendo alone accounts for 20% of the console software market?!

Small wonder that the publishers want anybody but Nintendo to make the gaming hardware. They'd like their lunch back.

Iwata: (laughs)

remember nearly 70 MILLION of that software is wii sports though

keep working on it. you are The Source. 

It actually does look like Disney / Warner Bros. / Lucas Arts are big enough to be included as 10m publishers. Majesco and Level 5 may be fairly close on DS too now that I think about it. Have to check.

good analysis

amazong that people think EA is stugling but is still  the highest selling 3rd party

I see that you are going by the publisher since Epic is not counted there. Capcom published games have sold more than 10 million on 360. Also I am pretty sure that Square/Eidos is also at 10m on 360.

that is pretty damn amazing, thanks for the info

interesting, very interesting

I just thought I'd point out that there's no analysis in that post. He hasn't analysed the numbers, he has found and presented the numbers.

This isn't to in any way take away from the good job he did, of course.