Whenever I actually venture into a physical games shop, I often despair that gamers must be getting stupider: it's the sight of buckets of poor conversions of licensed products, barrels of cheap edutainment titles, and a seventy three billion yearly-update-clones of exactly the same not-very-good game. Who is buying this stuff? I rant, grabbing the ten year-old sales clerk by the collar and frothing madly. My only comfort is the tiniest suspicion of a theory that the answer may be: nobody, that's why there's so much of it lying around on every available surface.

Luckily, for the fourth year in a row we've been blessed with the Develop 100: a comprehensive ranking of the top 100 selling developers on all platforms in the U.K. As the U.K. is the third biggest software market in the world, even allowing for some variation between countries the Develop 100 provides a pretty good guide as to which games are making money and which aren't, especially given that being a PAL territory, we often mirror game availability with the U.K. more so than Japan or the USA.

Bad news for those of us who still hold out for Xbox or PS3's triumphant ascendancy over the console market: Nintendo are clearly the rising stars this year, securing the number one position on the strength of the Wii and DS. There's quite a few other Japanese developers in the top 20, of course, including the almighty Konami grabbing 4th, Sega Studios Japan coming in at 9th, Yuke's Future Media Creators (you may know them from such titles as WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2007) at 12th, Capcom securing 15th, and Hudson (Who? Why, you heathens, does Bomberman ring any bells?) managing 20th.

There's strong representation from the other major development centres, of course. You'd expect the USA to dominate the top 20, really, but in fact with 7 entries ranking higher than 20th it can hardly be said to be owning Japan's total of 6. Canada performed extremely well, which may come as a surprise to those who haven't noticed the increasing game scene developing there, with 4, including EA Canada and Ubisoft Montreal coming in at 2nd and 3rd respectively. Local European representation also got a showing with 2 U.K. companies(Traveller's Tales of LEGO Star Wars fame, and Rebellion, noted for Miami Vice amongst others) and one French competitor, Ubisoft France.

Outside of the top 20, the USA took the home the highest medal tally with 33 companies listed, but the UK was very strong throughout with a comparable total of 27. Japan and Canada were the other major players with 19 and 12 respectively, and France managed a total of three placements.

The Top Five:
Wii Sports, from Nintendo	FIFA 08, from EA Canada	Assassin's Creed from Ubisoft Montreal	Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops from Konami	Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare from Infinity Ward

Some other European countries got a look-in, too: Denmark (IO Interactive), Germany (Digital Tainment Pool), Sweden (Starbreeze), Belgium (Visual Impact) and Romania (Ubisoft Romania) each managed one place each. These countries can always claim language barrier as an explanation for lack of English-language territory sales, but there's no excuse for our own poor performance with only one miserable placement. On the other hand, a big round of applause is due Tantalus for placing at all, in what is obviously a difficult market to crack. You may know them for such DS gems as, um, Pony Friends and Top Gear: Downforce.

Given how we're all on the edge of our seats for GTA IV, you might be interested to hear how our friends Rockstar placed. The short answer is, twice: once at 26th for Rockstar Leeds and again at 99th with Rockstar Vancouver. Other notables of interest include Bungie at 8th, Square Enix at 34th, Neversoft at 38th, and Blizzard at 47th.

I'm hoping someone will buy me the book so I can quote many more exciting statistics for you, but in the meantime... Visit the site to check out where your favourite developer landed on the Develop 100!