Although we instinctively think that we understand the shape of the PC and console market’s regional sprawl, how detailed can we get, and what implied information can we uncover?

This was the goal that we (accidentally?) accomplished recently. Through looking at public player profiles (such as seen on PSN Profiles) & game reviews / ratings, we developed some comprehensive charts showing where PlayStation, Xbox and PC players are located. So let’s check it out

• European countries aren’t far behind: you might think the United States is way ahead here, but it does have 4-5x the population of the UK, France, and Germany. So on a ‘PlayStation accounts per 1,000 people’ level, it’s closer to similar.

• Saudi Arabia is a surprising stand-out: it’s interesting that Saudi Arabia and the UAE (‘the affluent Middle East’ in general, since consoles may move around) account for almost 6% of all PSN players. Also: Arabic translations for AAA games can really boost sales, with Resident Evil 4 doing particularly well there.

• ‘Hong Kong’ - which also means China - is on the rise: we know there’s gray-market exporting of PlayStation 5s to mainland China. And although Hong Kong is only 2.5% of the lifetime profiles, we’re seeing it appear in the Top 3 ‘most played’ countries for bigger new titles like The Callisto Protocol. One to watch.

Here’s the country breakdown of the Xbox ecosystem - as estimated by lifetime review/rating counts on the store. Notes:

• The U.S. and UK are nearly half of the sample: if you live in the United States or the United Kingdom, it feels like Xbox vs. PlayStation are closer to even. And these figures help explain, with 48.5% of all Xbox ratings from these two locations.

• Brazil and Mexico are notable standouts vs. PlayStation: with 6.9% on Xbox vs. 4.3% on PlayStation, seems like Microsoft has good penetration in Brazil. Similar with Mexico (4.8% on Xbox, 2.3% on PS.) This doesn’t mean that Xbox leads the market - just that they do better there in relative percentages.

• Japan? Not necessarily the best showing for Xbox: no great surprises here, but Japan is ranked #18 in terms of our Xbox country estimate, compared to PlayStation’s #6 overall for Japan on its rankings.

Finally, we come to a country breakdown of Steam by player accounts, looking at profiles from the entire history of the platform. Here’s what we got:

• Steam: it’s just more international, folks: not really a shock that PCs allow for a wider set of international players who didn’t buy dedicated hardware. But the shape of the curve compared to Xbox and PlayStation is way less U.S. (13.7% of all profiles) centric.

• China (and Russia) are notably up there too: we talk a lot about the amount of ‘unofficial’ Chinese players on Steam International - here’s the proof (12.3%). And Russians too (9.7%), although players are mainly blocked from buying new games after Russia’s heinous invasion of the Ukraine.

• Keep an eye on South-East Asia for the future: the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand together are 4.7% of all accounts registered on Steam. And those countries - though perhaps not buying $60 games - are increasingly big consumers of PC game content.

So that’s what we’re seeing, folks. It may not be 100% reflective of emerging trends or real countries - like Argentina (& Turkey) being a bit over-represented on Steam. But it’s a good way to understand which countries are playing on various platforms. That’s important for localization, marketing, and general biz intelligence reasons…

if uIf you are thinking of buying in any of these stores, go to @perastik on tg to buy with cc arg