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

Glossing over the obvious point

[Dancin_Santa]

If you are a large game house like EA with solid games like their EA Sports line, you can expect big returns for yearly updates.

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

The only thing that is clear from this article is that them that's got will get and them's that's not shall lose. And it still is news, I guess.

Uhh.. length of game/movie play?

[QuantumG]

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.

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

[Matrix272]

Either way, this doesn't happen very often with games.

I'm sure that the 2 million people that bought Madden 2004 will only play 1 game of it, then toss it aside and wait for the next game. I played Metal Gear Solid through about 4 times, and MGS2 through twice. My estimation is if $7.50 == 2 hours of entertainment for movies, then $50 == 13.3 hours of entertainment for movies. Correct? In that case, spending $50 for a game, even if it's only a 25-hour long game, is much more of a bargain than going to the movies.

On the other hand, buying a DVD is a slightly different story. If you watch a movie 5 times over the time that the DVD works, then it's 10 hours for $20... which is $2 == 1 hour. In that case, it's EXACTLY equal to spending $50 == 25 hours. Hmmm... maybe it's not so different after all.....

Cheap!

[JM Apocalypse]

You also have to realize that a huge amount of games are made for the sole purpose of promoting a movie or other product. Most are made very quickly, and you can tell by the quality (** cough ** Harry Potter ** cough **). But, companies like id are there spending years making games, and create a solid game, but making small amounts of profit out of it. I have tried playing these games, and it looks like very little effort even went into them. Join with me, fellow /.ers, and boycott games!

Well ... at least until Doom III comes out. (YAY)

I don't understand what is the big draw in these games. People play replicas of previous year's games, with a few minor changes, and are willing to shell out $50 for each minor revision. If software was like this, then there would be 20,000 Microsoft's running around.

You also have to keep in mind that 1/3 of the games are from Microsoft ... so I am partially correct.

- fin -

MMOG Cashflow

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sims online is a failure with just under 10k people paying $10 a month?

That's still $100k a month. Even paying for the huge pipe the game's servers need, there's still gonna be left over cash.

People tend to forget games like Evercrack, DAOC, even SWG, are huge cash cows.

Maybe if Sims Online drops below 5k users then there may be some issues with supporting constant developer updates, but even then, the game still makes enough money for it to live on.

Advertisers have known about this for a while now

[tessaiga]

Just as Ford shelled out to have 007 drive an Aston Martin in "Die Another Day", car manufacturers will go out of their way to provide prototype designs and specs for their new muscle cars for inclusion into games like Grand Turismo. As the article points out, gamers spend enormous amounts of time with a good game, which gives your product much better exposure than a 30-second TV commercial or a print ad.