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Forums - Gaming - Age-rating-distribution per platform

I just browsed the USK data (German age classification system) a bit and found this statistic about the shift of age ratings over the years:

It includes PC, console and handheld games, but no mobile games. The share of games suitable for all ages get smaller each year, because more and more arcade and puzzle games are released on smartphones and tablets instead of PCs, consoles and handhelds.

The I digged a little deeper via title search, where you can filter for platforms and age classifications, and made this spread sheet:

As expected, handheld games target younger / broader audiences than console games. Also expected: games on Nintendo systems target younger / broader audiences than games on Sony and Microsoft systems. Nevertheless, each PlayStation and Xbox system has many games suitable for children and teenagers. Wii U and 3DS are on a good way to offer a more versatile selection of games than their predecessors.

Keep in mind that games with USK 0 or USK 6 ratings are not automatically suitable for / targeted at preschool kids. The USK mainly rates the violence level of a game... puzzle games with difficult riddles and sport games like FIFA also get USK 0, even if little kids have no chance to grasp the game.

I also have no wish to conceal the fact that games which don't even get a USK-18-rating are left out in the spreadsheet. You can't search for them in the title search... probably to protect us from these harmful brutal games. ;) But it makes no big difference... as you can see in the upper statistic, the share of unrated games was always under 2% and shrunk each year, because publishers aren't allowed to advertise these games.

And here is the PEGI chart:





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Even Nintendo systems are becoming less kid-friendly it seems.



Interesting. Looks like a healthy distribution. I'm all for variety.

I'm also guessing the Vita's percentages will change if more Japanese games make their way over ...



Salnax said:
Even Nintendo systems are becoming less kid-friendly it seems.

They're plenty kid-friendly.  All of them are kid friendly.  However, shifting demographics means other types of games will also have audiences.  Nothing wrong with that and you'll see the same thing in other types of media.



Added the PEGI data:



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RolStoppable said:
Do you also have the raw numbers for those percentages in the statistic? The total number of games per year.

Neither the PEGI-search nor the USK-search offers a filter for years, you can only filter for system, rating, genre and publisher:

http://www.pegi.info/en/index/global_id/505/

http://www.usk.de/titelsuche/titelsuche/

But in one of the yearly USK-reports I found the number of the classification procedures per year:

In 2013 the number of the classification procedures fell again to 2088... the shift of casual games from PC to mobile.

I combined these yearly totals with the percentages from the other chart:



With these results, where did Sony and MS fanboys get the "Our consoles are for mature gamers." thing from? This says otherwise.

Not that I've seen much people on here say that, just other fourms and comment sections.



pezus said:
Nintentacle said:
With these results, where did Sony and MS fanboys get the "Our consoles are for mature gamers." thing from? This says otherwise.

Not that I've seen much people on here say that, just other fourms and comment sections.

Actually, it supports their claim pretty decently. 

Well those guys say there's mostly "mature" games, when that isn't true.



Nintentacle said:
With these results, where did Sony and MS fanboys get the "Our consoles are for mature gamers." thing from? This says otherwise.

Not that I've seen much people on here say that, just other fourms and comment sections.


what numbers are you reading?

No other system has a higher percentage of games for older gamers than those 2.



Wonktonodi said:
Nintentacle said:
With these results, where did Sony and MS fanboys get the "Our consoles are for mature gamers." thing from? This says otherwise.

Not that I've seen much people on here say that, just other fourms and comment sections.


what numbers are you reading?

No other system has a higher percentage of games for older gamers than those 2.

Read the comment before yours, if you haven't.