Number of Commercially Released Amiga Games By Year

[lionagony]

I just thought it might be fun to use HOL to count up the number of Amiga games released by year. There are probably a bunch of duplicates so this isn't deadly accurate but should give a good overview. I just searched HOL with 2 variables Commercial License and Year of Release.

1985 - 18
1986 - 130
1987 - 263
1988 - 582
1989 - 775
1990 - 766
1991 - 874
1992 - 651
1993 - 574
1994 - 573
1995 - 288
1996 - 150
1997 - 72
1998 - 58
1999 - 22
2000 - 22
2001 - 09

Then 2006 is the first year with 0 commercial releases. A few things that stuck out to me were how few games there were the first year. I was also surprised that the number went down a bit in 1990, but not surpised to see the peak was 1991.

I think a lot of people would be surprised 1994 was so strong but some of the most polished games like Ruff N Tumble, Kid Chaos, Elfmania, Super Stardust came out that year. 1995 was also not too bad with 288 titles. So we had 10 years 86-96 with over 100 games coming out per year, that's pretty amazing, salute to the GOAT computer!

[chip]

Amiga rulez !

[Megalomaniac]

I expected 1991 to be the year with the most games, the American publishers started to lose interest then, though I suspect the amount of European-developed games was pretty steady up to 1994 - though does this count A1200 and CD32 versions as three separate releases? Still, seven successive years with over 500 releases is quite something, especially as most of the 1994 games will have ran on a 1987 model with only a (initially) £100 memory upgrade needed. I wonder if the Spectrum 48k or C64 managed that, even if they had more games overall?

[lionagony]

Yes, this does include multiple versions of the same game, and also the same game with different names and educational games etc. I went through the 150 releases from 1996 more closely and if you exclude compilations and unreleased games and different versions and names that's 36 of the 150 gone so about 25% and a new total of 114. Even if we assume that 25% of all the titles from all the years are duplicates (although it's probably less pre-AGA) that still leaves a big and impressive number.

[TCD]

Just as a remark: If you don't count compilations and data disks the numbers are a bit smaller. As an example in 1991 there are 738 commercial releases with those restrictions applied: https://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php...no&datadisk=no
(plus some games will be counted more than one time because of name variations)

[gimbal]

You see it effectively halve every year as of 1994. Still, ~150 in 1996 is surprisingly high for me.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Still, ~150 in 1996 is surprisingly high for me.

Nearly 100 of those are OCS/ECS titles. Which I find quite surprising.

[gimbal]

That I can understand, you will want to target the machines that people actually have sitting in their house. There will have been more OCS/ECS machines than AGA machines.

[TCD]

I would have thought that by 1996 people that still had an Amiga would have upgraded to AGA, but I guess you are right.

[grond]

Interesting numbers for sure! It would be interesting to see the average release price of the games. I would suspect that those dropped over time indicating that the market wasn't as healthy in the later years as the release numbers make it look.

[TCD]

You can check that in Amiga Joker. In 1991 the 'top releases' would be around 90 DM and in 1996 80 DM. I know AMIPEGUSER posted some sales numbers on a1k.org once, but it would be interesting how many copies of new games were sold in 1996.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by TCD

I would have thought that by 1996 people that still had an Amiga would have upgraded to AGA, but I guess you are right.

Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, that kind of changed the ideal timeline.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, that kind of changed the ideal timeline.

Yeah, but ESCOM kept selling them at least until summer of 1996.

[oscar_ates]

MK1-2 made for A500 for a reason. It sold 100.000, no AGA games sold that much. Most people jumped ship from A500 to PC or consoles.

[gimbal]

Guilty

[sokolovic]

I'd be curious to know what was the best selling AGA only game. Maybe Aladdin ? Since Virgin released the Lion King sometimes after, probably it was because Aladdin sales were enough satisfying.
Maybe Alien Breed 3D also ...

[gimbal]

You'd think it is one of the FPS games because gaming became all about that pretty much overnight, but it might just be Aladdin since the FPS games were in a heavy competition battle for pocket money.

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

I'd be curious to know what was the best selling AGA only game. Maybe Aladdin ? Since Virgin released the Lion King sometimes after, probably it was because Aladdin sales were enough satisfying.
Maybe Alien Breed 3D also ...

I couldn't find any stats on Aladdin but according to this https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=103431 and this https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...fa8/edit#gid=0 Pinball Fantasies and Microcosm both sold 20,000 copies for the CD32 and Alien Breed 3D sold more than 15,000 copies.

This is an interesting aside about the Genesis version of Aladdin https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...dinVirginGames "Overall, it was a smash hit—the Genesis version in particular sold 4 million copies total, making it the third best selling Genesis game behind Sonic the Hedgehog (20 million) and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (6 million). To put this in perspective, the fourth best selling Genesis game, NBA Jam, only sold a little under 2 million units. Nintendo was particularly envious at the sales of this version; its massive success and novel use of pre-rendered animation as sprites led them to form a partnership with Rare that would ultimately result in Donkey Kong Country."

The biggest selling Amiga game that was confirmed in that thread was Sensible Soccer Euro Champions at 130,000. There were 5 million Amigas sold and 30 million Sega Genesis/Mega Drives so 6X. If you take 130,000 x 6 that's 780,000. So I think that discrepancy can only come down to a few things, the Genesis had a lot less games to choose from (878) and piracy.

[gimbal]

Eh apples and oranges, at least a little. An Amiga had a lot of games, but it isn't a gaming machine. It is a PC, general purpose computing.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by lionagony

The biggest selling Amiga game that was confirmed in that thread was Sensible Soccer Euro Champions at 130,000. There were 5 million Amigas sold and 30 million Sega Genesis/Mega Drives so 6X. If you take 130,000 x 6 that's 780,000. So I think that discrepancy can only come down to a few things, the Genesis had a lot less games to choose from (878) and piracy.

There is a preview of Super Street Fighter 2 where an official of US Gold says that SF2 sold 250 000 copies but my english isn't good enough to see if he was joking.
Here, last page at the end
http://amr.abime.net/review_29075