Market research for video games?

[MavistheMaven]

You don't need to cite sales history for specific games. Cite sales for role-playing games or social games or games with a certain theme. It is quite possible to gauge your sales expectations on existing data for other games. You can see whether a trend shows those sales to be increasing or not, or which platforms (PC vs. console games vs. mobile games) are gaining/losing market share. If you don't see many sales for something, that may indicate an underserved market, not necessarily lack of interest.

Two sources you might check:
The International Game Developers Association
Game Developer Magazine has industry surveys and such.

Other ways you might do market research are to give your own surveys and hold focus groups of people in your target market (college age males, or schoolkids, or adult women, or senior citizens)