Only 17% of 360 titles are shooters

by David Dreger { Aug 10th 2007 at 11:00AM }

Think that the Xbox 360 is unjustly accused a "shooters only" platform? Well, the guys over at FPS Source thought so, and cataloged the current 137 titles available for the 360 into their respective genres and showed what's the most common on the system, and we met them halfway and generated this nifty pie chart for easy consumption. FPS take up 11% and Third Person Shooters take up 6%. The most common genres are either Sports titles, and Action/Adventure games. So, next time someone comments on there not being enough selection outside of the shoot 'em up style, set the record straight.

Tags: firstpersonshooters, fps, xbox360

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Tony @ Aug 10th 2007 11:04AM

It's mostly a complaint by people who don't want or don't plan to buy the system to begin with... Although I'm kind of surprised it is as low as it is, particularly since this excludes XBLA games.

Sean @ Aug 10th 2007 11:08AM

I wanna see a graph that shows what percentage of good games are shooters.

DjDATZ @ Aug 10th 2007 11:07AM

I knew it...There aren't ENOUGH shooters (well until a month and a half from now...) on the 360... (Not that I'd get to play them or have the money to buy them...)

Preston Crawford @ Aug 10th 2007 11:12AM

I own the system and I have this complaint. I'd like to see this same breakdown for games that are good. Because even though I don't have a number to prove it, my gut tells me that most of the effort is still going into shooters. One also has to wonder how many of the action/adventure games are GTA clones and thus essentially shooters.

Besides, if you take shooters and add in sports that makes up almost half of all games on the system. I think what people like myself complain about is a lack of originality. Not so much the dominance of shooters as the lack of original titles like the PS2 gets. Games like Katamari (which we're thankfully getting), Okami, Shadow of the Colossus and all the wonderful RPGs are the things the 360 is missing. And the system still misses this diversity, IMHO.

Thankfully, for me at least, the 360 is saved in large part by the awesomeness of the XBLA. But if it weren't for that, the system would definitely feel like a wasteland of just sports and shooters.

Toph @ Aug 10th 2007 11:12AM

It's funny you posted this story today. I had a fanboy argument over this very same topic two days ago, with a friend stating that the Xbox is for 'shooter fans' and the Playstation is for 'action adventure' fans.

My stance was that the Xbox (first iteration) was known for it's SUPERIOR shooters, but didn't have more than the PS2 had. They were just better. (Same with this generation, by the way..)

Right now, I'd say the Playstation is for fans of 'The Waiting Game', because they play it a LOT and they're good at it by now!

n8 @ Aug 10th 2007 11:18AM

6% rpgs. Where...? I see enchanted arms and oblivion. That is not 6%.

Toph @ Aug 10th 2007 11:21AM

@5/Preston...

Don't forget Asassin's Creed, Tomb Raider, Saint's Row, Crackdown, Alan Wake, Mass Effect, Too Human, Mercenaries, Lost Planet, Splinter Cell, LEGO Star Wars, Dead Rising and Condemned..

I honestly can't think of many action/adventure games for the Playstation 3 than Heavenly Sword, MGS4, that launch game that looked like Champions of Norrath, the Gundam game and LittleBigPlanet. I know I'm wrong, but they sure as hell don't stick in my head.

Toph @ Aug 10th 2007 11:22AM

Oh..and Overlord.

adam @ Aug 10th 2007 11:27AM

xbox gets its reputation for being a "shooter" or "fps" console from the original xbox, because it seemed like a new shooter was being released every other week.

ZeroCorpse @ Aug 10th 2007 11:49AM

GTA Clones? I can only think of two: Saint's Row and Crackdown.

What others am I missing?

adam @ Aug 10th 2007 11:29AM

xbox gets its reputation for being a "shooter" or "fps" console from the original xbox, because it seemed like a new shooter was being released every other week.

Tony @ Aug 10th 2007 11:35AM

Yeah, but clearly one coming out every week is impossible given these numbers anyway... I mean, that's kind of the point.

Morgon @ Aug 10th 2007 11:39AM

RPGs:

Oblivion
Final Fantasy
Enchanted Arms
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Phantasy Star Universe
Eternal Sonata
Blue Dragon

Don't know if the last two are being counted, but that's what MGC uses for its Genre Leaderboards.

Maurice M @ Aug 10th 2007 11:53AM

I'm very shocked by the numbers. Where are all these non-shooter/sports games? They must be hidden on the sales charts/racks.

Preston Crawford @ Aug 10th 2007 12:08PM

Godfather, Just Cause, those are two other GTA clones I can think of.

Kelly @ Aug 10th 2007 12:11PM

First I'd like to say that not having much of a selection outside of sports titles is WAY worse than not having selection outside of "shooter" titles.

I also agree with what Preston said in #5 -- adding the two together makes up nearly half of games on the system. So while one or the other may not appear to have an overwhelming percentage on its own, added together they don't leave much room for other genres. Add in action/adventure and you've accounted for 70% of 360 titles, which is pretty ridiculous.

I think another major problem is lack of variety within those genres themselves. Again as 5 & 7 pointed out, a lot of the games in the action/adventure catagory are essentially shooters. And outside of Tony Hawk & the upcoming SKATE, I'm not aware of any sports games that are of the extreme sport variety. Perhaps there would be less complaining if the titles in the majority genres were more diverse and not as much clones of each other.

I'd be interested to see a sub-genre breakdown of what percentage of the shooters are horror versus war-type versus whatever, and what percentage of the action/adventure titles are shooting-based versus otherwise.

jdb @ Aug 10th 2007 12:17PM

The following link shows the games:
http://forums.fpssource.net/showthread.php?t=27

While the 17% is true in theory, it's a pointless number in my opinion because the sports category and action/adventure categories are very weak.

If you simply counted each Madden, NFL2k, Tiger Woods, etc game as a single entity rather than enumerate each yearly "iteration" then that category goes from 36 games to something like 24 games. Likewise, if you factor out all the bad licensed games in action/adventure (which are on every system) that category ends up nearly nonexistent.

Of course, it's absolutely true that you don't have to buy a 360 for shooters alone. Even after adjusting that list, you end up with nearly equal proportions of each genre. And with Virtual Fighter 5 and Soul Caliber 4 coming out, as well as Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, Cry On, Lost Odyssey, Mass Effect, and Fallout 3 the fighter and RPG lineups are growing very nicely over the next 8 months.

Heck, I hate shooters and don't own a 360 yet. I'm buying a Falcon this fall exclusively as my next-gen JRPG system. That alone showcases how much MS has expanded genres this generation.

Measure @ Aug 10th 2007 12:24PM

Interesting, but what would happen to the chart if you took away all the movie tie-in games (read: irrelevant games).

I think then the Shooter category would show up much stronger.

Also, is Saints Row classified as action/adventure, or 3rd person shooter?

Justin @ Aug 10th 2007 12:31PM

the shooters are the only ones worth playing.

or the ones that are praised the most on the 360.

the ones that developers spend more time/money on.

the ones that shine on the 360.

the only ones anybody pays attention to.

besides racing games of course.

Measure @ Aug 10th 2007 12:52PM

I reviewed the list of games over at fpsource, and I'm not impressed by their choices... Saints Row not in the shooter category? Other games also I feel should have been in the shooter category were in action/adventure.

And I still say, if you take all the movie games out of the equation, you'll see FPS and TPS games are indeed dominant on the 360.

IIIEnforcerIII @ Aug 10th 2007 1:04PM

Supply and Demand. Thats what it is all about. Corporations don't cater to the always over-vocal minority. They make money by supplying what cusotmers want the most. End of story. If you complain about the platform you are playing on, its a clear sign that you have not chosen wisely for your playing needs. Those who don't like so many shooters, get a Wii.

The 80/20 rule applies here as well. Basically 80% of any given outcome is accomplished by only 20% of the total input. An example: At work most of the tasks get done by several hardworkers while the rest are "just there." In this case, of course adding the 2 or 3 most popular genres will come to a significant total. Why wouldn't it? You could just as easily argue that if you added the sports and action/adventure games that you get the same percentage and thus argue that shooters are not represented enough.-IIIEnforcerIII

Mike-453 @ Aug 10th 2007 1:07PM

Long-ranged combat classes as a 'shooter', therefore a shit load of games can be called shooters. Using long-ranged weaponry is just a way of combat, developers just need to be coming up with different stuff to make it more interesting and add in some quality melee combat as well.

Crazed Geek @ Aug 10th 2007 3:42PM

I made a chart based on the one shown here that only shows games with a Metascore of 80+:

http://rantings.ofacrazedgeek.com/2007/08/a-breakdown-of-the-best-360-ga.html

Mark @ Aug 10th 2007 1:14PM

Do any MATURE people make the claim that xbox is for shooters only? If not, I don't think fighting back with facts is going to help. You have to retaliate with "Nuh uh!" and "So's your mom"

Dragod @ Aug 10th 2007 1:24PM

That's because Xbox 360 really tried to have more appeal towards many types of gamers who it didn't have with the original Xbox. They've done a good job of it, it just so happens that a Shooter plays best on the 360.

Preston Crawford @ Aug 10th 2007 1:50PM

A shooter doesn't "play best" on the 360. That doesn't even make any sense. Catan or Carcassonne are arguably easier to play on the 360 and much more fun. It's a pity that we have so few games like that and so many shooters.

I like Crazed Geek's chart he created. If you look at the chart broken down by game quality, literally 49% of all games with a Metacritic score of 80 or more are either shooters or sports titles.

Throw in the Action/Adventure games like Saints Row, Crackdown, Dead Rising, etc. that are either shooters essentially or else hyper-violent games and you would definitely get well over 50%. I would love to see someone fairly recatagorize some of the Action Adventure games. I imagine the number of highly rated sports/shooters/violent action games would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 70%.

There is a reason the 360 has this reputation. No amount of number manipulation will change the fact that when I go to my local game store (which I don't do very often thanks to XBLA) my options are often like this. Violence, violence, violence, sports, violence, violence, "Surf's Up", violence, "Harry Potter".

It would be nice to walk in and have something different and refreshing to grab off the shelf. And once again I say this as someone who loves the 360 and who uses it as my main console. I say what I say because I want the 360 to get better as a platform so I don't wakeup someday and have to go buy a PS3 or dust off the Wii in order to get some variety.

Otis Whitaker @ Aug 10th 2007 2:27PM

This generation as a whole is one terrible, terrible pit of a lack of variety.
...and I mostly blame it on the overpricing of the PS3, which is stunting the next gen industry growth.
The audience for the PS2 was different. They openly accept, and want variety.
The Nintendo audience mostly just wants Nintendo stuff.
The Microsoft audience mostly just wants violent, actiony, shooty, multiplayery stuff.
With Sony failing, currently, we're saddled with Microsoft and Nintendo leading, which then puts developers in a position to throw away any original ideas, and cater to the limited audiences they're dealt with, or just make a PS2 game instead.

Grindstone @ Aug 10th 2007 2:29PM

As per your request, the following is another pie chart that caters to Xbox 360 games with a meta-score of 80 or better. Some of you will be disappointed, but that's how I prefer you:

http://rantings.ofacrazedgeek.com/2007/08/a-breakdown-of-the-best-360-ga.html

Grindstone @ Aug 10th 2007 2:31PM

Damn you Crazed Geek, DAMN YOU!!1!!1 Why hadn't your post showed up earlier...?

Crazed Geek @ Aug 10th 2007 3:43PM

That's what I get for trying to come back to this article by clicking the Confirm link again. >.

Grindstone @ Aug 10th 2007 5:12PM

And now you have a thread dedicated specifically to you. Happy day!

Turboman @ Aug 11th 2007 10:22AM

Not enough RPGs for me. x/ But Mass Effect and Lost Odyssey still looks just frikkin' amazing!

SDG @ Aug 11th 2007 12:31AM

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback and comments either on my own blog or through here. First off, I somewhat feel honored to see something I started to be featured on Xbox360Fanboy, believe me I have been staying up to date with xbox 360, and console news and gaming in general through joystiq, so its something that literally 'wow'd' me.

Now the reason I stuck titles like Saints Row, Condemned, etc and stuck them in Action/Action Adventure is because they go beyond just shooting unlike a title like Call of Duty 3 or Gears of War, which specifically are mainly just shooting, and what not.

It was really tough to do this, and its currently only me who is working on this soo, I tried the best I could.

THanks for everything, thank you David, and Crazed Geek for doing a similar study with better titles.

Also, I had plans to include only one version of each sport title rather then each years, but I just went with as many titles as I could. However, I have plans to update and improve this study in the next 48 hours hopefully, so we will see. As requested, and possibly with many more genre categories and what not.

Also, I hope to get a few more xbox 360 titles that I might have missed that are (english/american titles).

That is all!

SDG @ Aug 11th 2007 10:27AM

I know what you mean. I'm really looking forward to Mass Effect.

Two Worlds looks decent, pick it up mate!

James @ Aug 12th 2007 2:27AM

I know I'm showing up late to this party, but I wanted to stress how much I agree with #25. That quote about "violence, violence, sports, violence, Harry Potter" is *exactly* how I feel when I walk into the video game store and browse the 360 section. I'll go you one better though:

Xbox 1: "shooter, Barbie, sports, shooter, GTA clone, movie license, shooter"

Gamecube: "anime; sports; movie license; Barbie; Intriguing original game!; Nickelodeon; 1st Party game!; anime"

PS3: "[cricket chirp]"

Wii: "anime, pointless waggle, mini-games, mini-games, mini-games, 1st Party game!, mini-games, shitty port, mini-games"

Needless to say, I eagerly await the end of this year (MP3:C, Mass Effect, Bioshock, too many others to name).