Last weekend I was at an engagement party with a whole bunch of "non-gamers", IE) Friends that don't generally game on a regular basis and also friends that don't even own a gaming console. I was on a table of about ten and I started talking about the gaming industry and discussing with them some of the statistics involved with the gaming industry as a whole.

Many of my friends are in some type of industry whether it be insurance, engineering, sales, teaching, hospitality and all know how tough it is economically in Australia at the moment - People just aren't spending their money.

I was trying to explain and stress to them how big the gaming industry really is and how much money goes into it. Big corporations are sponsoring events like Minecon and every day on twitch.tv there is some tournament going on with polished commentators sitting in uber expensive studios but many people don't realise the figures involved in the gaming industry.

Recently, whenever I have read a news post on Gamespot that talks about any kind of gaming number or statistic I have written it down and I have come up with some numbers that not only astonished my friends but even had me in awe; I've hyperlinked each numbered stat so you can view the original article.

1. Playstation 3 sells over 70MILL units worldwide. Think about that number for a minute... Thats A LOT of PS3. XBOX had already sold that by October 2012 and Nintendo have reported selling over 97.12MILL units of the Wii worldwide as of September so Sony is only playing "catch ups".

2. Wii U sells 400,000 units in first week. Thats 57,142.86 units PER DAY. Some people are saying "Really? Only 400,000 units?" - Keep in mind that they sold 1.2MILL consoles in total during that same week.

3. Average age of US gamer is 30. This is one that really intrigued my friends. They all thought gaming was for kids, they didn't realise that it can be a great outlet after a day of hard work for adults. I love gaming moreso now than when I was a kid because I can buy all the good stuff that I couldn't as a kid!

4. Over 1.1MILL have finished Halo 4 campaign in first 5 days. Halo 4 also sold $220MILL in the first 24 hours and only 6% finished the game on "Legendary" in those first 5 days. You think that is impressive?

5. Black Ops II nets $500MILL in first 24 hours. Even friends of mine that aren't habitual gamers lined up for a midnight opening of the local EB Games store.

6. US digital sales, add-on content, subscriptions, mobile games ETC total consumer spend over $2.87BILL in Q3. Thats A LOT of money for the quarter - Imagine globally what this figure would escalate to. 2011 alone saw total sales in the US over $25BILL.

7. Australian goverment pledges over $20MILL in home grown game development. When you look at the US in comparison to the amount of game releases it makes me think it's about time that my own country joined the party. There's a lot of talent in this country and whilst we're now releasing some of the best movies in the world and not some B grade crap like we used to we now have the ability to make a splash in the global gaming industry too.

8. Steam hits 6MILL concurrent users. This is A LOT of users. Whilst many of them probably have Steam in their startup and are always running Steam in the background it is still a very impressive number.

9. Australian Gamer played Black Ops II for nearly 136 straight hours. Granted he was allowed a 10min break every hour this is still quite a feat. What amuses me about this stat, and in particular the article (Click the "9." at the start of this stat) was the fact his employer allowed him to game for 5 days on company time.

10. Microsoft sold over 750,000 XBOX consoles in the USA during the "Black Friday" period. Nintendo sold 1.2MILL hardware units during the same week.

11. Grand Theft Auto series shipments reach 125MILL. I think this will double once GTA:V is released.

As you can see there are so many stats about the gaming industry that impress and shake your head. Even though console and game sales are through the roof there are many gaming studios closing and firing staff because they can't move enough units. The gaming industry is quite cut throat and ultimately it comes down to what gamers are buying. This keeps the industry fresh and progressive. If you know of anymore stats, post them below.