Fortune Magazine On 'The Biggest Game In Town'

Thanks to Fortune Magazine for their feature on why games are seriously big business. The introduction reads: "Music? Sales down. Hollywood? Hit or miss. Tech? Flat. No wonder everyone wants to be in videogames", as the piece goes on to throw out some interesting statistics: "Within three weeks [of release, Madden NFL] grossed $100 million -- two million copies sold at $50 a pop. In roughly the same period, the summer hit movie Seabiscuit returned $78 million." The amount of hours spent in front of games is also highlighted: "On average an American will spend 75 hours this year playing videogames, more than double the amount of time spent gaming in 1997 and eclipsing that of DVD or tape rentals today." But despite the article's EA-hyping, it points out the cyclical nature of the industry and failures, too, such as The Sims Online, to which "...just under 10,000 are now subscribed."

Comments

Re:Glossing over the obvious point

[NanoGator]

"Try to break into the business without having serious funding. It's almost impossible."

It's not that bad. Lots of opportunities around. I, for one, wouldn't mind working on a shareware PocketPC game. It's not like you'd need a whole lot of resources to get that going. You've got the net as a delivery mechanism etc. Okay, it won't make you insta-rich, but it's an avenue to explore.

Console gaming is an entirely different animal. Start small.

Re:MMOG Cashflow

[NonSequor]

I could be wrong, but I don't think that the profit is as good as you would imply. In order to keep subscribers in an MMOG, you have to continue to employ artists and programmers to provide new content and fix whatever problems there may be (MMOG players are the bitchiest of all gamers). On top of that, these games have very long development cycles and so the company needs a lot of cash to offset the development costs.

75?

[August_zero]

On average an American will spend 75 hours this year playing videogames, more than double the amount of time spent gaming in 1997

Dear God! When Wind Waker came out I spent like 50 hours in a weeks time with it, I picked up Disgaea last Thursday and I was at 30 hours by Sunday.

Either 75 is a really low estimate (thats what, an hour and 15 min a week?) Or I can expect some friends and family to be ambushing me with an intervention pretty soon....

Re:Uhh.. length of game/movie play?

[asjk]

On average an American will spend 75 hours this year playing videogames .. eclipsing that of DVD or tape rentals today.

You really can make statistics say anything you want. Nevermind that a movie lasts 2 hours (maybe 4 if you're an Oliver Stone fan), whereas a game is required to supply 50+ hours of gameplay or it's considered a waste of money.

I'm not sure I understand your objection. Sure the average time for the two activities differ in their unit length--I get the point that we see more movies but play videogames longer. I think the salient point is that these pastimes are reaching parity in monetary outlays and the total time of engagement. Many of my friends (older folks) are stunned to hear videogames have better sales then first run movies. This would be important points for advertisers, say or investors. The datum is valid for some uses but not others.

P2P influences?

[neglige]

Music? Sales down. Hollywood? Hit or miss.

Now, how much does filesharing influence this? For music, I'd say quite a bit. Not so much for movies - it's l33t to have the latest blockbuster on (S)VCD, even before the premiere, but in the end - if you liked the movie - you still go to the theatre and watch it on the big screen. Supposedly true for music CDs also, but I guess to a lesser extend.

What about games? Yes, you can find virtually any title on (most of) your favourite P2P network. Documentation may be missing, or may be included as a PDF, but there are commercial box version available that do not offer much more than that, especially since the advent of DVD cases...

So either John and Jane Doe take delight in d/l movies, but not games, or the number of people playing a game are much larger than the sales figures. If you have a pirated version of the game, the drawbacks are much lower than those of a pirated movie. And I'm not even convinced that the majority uses the pirated games as a "full demo" and buys the game afterwards, if they like it.

Just my 2 cents. I would be nice to have numbers so a definite statement could be made... :)