I came across this article on Wired the other day. So I asked myself, “How big is the gaming industry, anyways?”

Doing some research, ideas started forming up. Data I used here is simply derived from the Wikipedia page, List of Best Selling Video Games. You can use this link for the live version of a small chart I made.

Most of us have had some kind of an interaction with video games in our lives. Tetris, Mario Brothers and Minecraft are games majority of the people heard of. This chart too shows us that because they sold millions and millions of copies.

The video gaming industry had an interesting progression so far. It all started developing properly in the 70s. It snowballed so fast, we couldn’t see how the graphics technologies of today emerged. There literally are graphics cards that can cost as much as a used car. Fortunately today, you don’t need to spend nowhere near that for casual gaming.

I just realized that Minecraft, which is on the third place in our list, actually sold more copies than Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Not to mention that Tetris sold approximately twice of that across all platforms. As a matter of fact, it only took Grand Theft Auto 5, two years to reach a sales number of 52 million (which is pretty close to the average estimated number of copies Thriller sold). It’s a huge sea, right? An average video game usually costs more than 20USD. Today, a song on iTunes will cost you around 1USD. Of course, expenses in the music industry is a completely different ball game. But, it is a safe assumption to say that video gaming industry is almost as big as the music industry.

In the recent years, however, revenues of video game companies was on decline as were their shares. PCs are overtaken by mobile devices and consoles. Apparently the industry is going through a contraction. Though its form may change, gaming will most likely remain a major industry.