The most popular board games appear to be strategy games about expansionary command of territory and resources. From what I can tell participants take winning quite seriously. The simple explanation is that German people are rather competitive in nature and will therefore tend to enjoy such scenarios. read more
400-600 new board games are published every year - 30-50% of them are sold as export goods. 2013, sales were 400 million EUR - card games and dice games being the most popular genre ( 9.5% and 17% respectively) Hanabi itself sold 700k copies - it was the first card game to become Spiel des Jahres in 36 years. read more