Australian development population has more than halved

The latest data on Australia's game development community suggests the number of staff employed locally has dropped dramatically in recent years.

According to the Australia Bureau of Statistics, as reported by Kotaku, just 581 people were employed in the games industry in FY 2012.

That's well less than half of the 1,431 noted in an ABS release from 2007. A 2011 survey found a similar amount of shrinkage.

Revenue dropped from $137 million in FY 2077 to $89 million in FY 2012, too.

One point from the data which is much discussed today is that of the 581 staff included in the data, which presumably doesn't include areas like PR and marketing, only 51 are female, or less than 9% of the total - down from the 2007 figures.

Over the course of FY 2011, the Australian games industry produced 245 games, including 188 for mobile, 27 for PC and 14 for consoles.