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Game Industry Bigger Than Hollywood

Posted by michael on from the been-true-for-a-while dept.

Ant writes "This SF Gate story says stacks of new releases for hungry video game enthusiasts mean it's boom time for an industry now even bigger than Hollywood. The $10 billion video game industry, which generates more revenue than Hollywood, has never released so many highly anticipated blockbuster titles in a single season. It started in August with the game title Doom 3, followed by The Sims 2 in September, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in October, then Halo 2, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Half-Life 2 last month. In November, sales of video games rose to $849 million, an 11 percent increase from the same month last year and up 77 percent from October, according to the industry research firm NPD Funworld. The industry set a milestone last month when Microsoft's Halo 2 -- a sequel to a futuristic game with an elaborate plot that pits humans against invading aliens -- surpassed Hollywood's opening-weekend movie box office record in just one day of sales."

10 of 503 comments (clear)

  1. Contrinutions by PygmySurfer · · Score: 1, Informative

    I know I contributed about $150 to this.. how much did other /.ers contribute?

    1. Re:Contrinutions by maddskillz · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actully, according to This Article the porn industry brings in between 4 and 10 billion. I heard on the news the other day a figure of 9 billion, which they said we more then the big 3 networks combined

  2. Re:Apples and Oranges by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    $10 billion is the number often thrown around for an average year of US movies at the box office. It does not include DVD purchases or rentals, or any of the other associated merchandise.

  3. Re:Three worlds by veltyen · · Score: 2, Informative

    You are confusing the economic with the biological.

    Biologically there is the new world (the americas) and the old world (eurasia and africa). Old world monkeys vs new world monkeys. Old world Bison vs new world Bison, and so on.

    Then there is the economic terms
    1st world: Modern Capitalism
    2nd world: Modern Communism
    3rd world: not developed enough to count as either.

    Japan is very much 1st world. China is 2nd world. India is 3rd world (though could also be put in the 1st world bin). The terms are becoming antiquated with the fall of Russian Communism, and changes to world economics since the 1960/70's.

  4. Re:All sequels by shigelojoe · · Score: 2, Informative

    To make the American version of Super Mario Brothers 2, Nintendo basically took a preexisting Japan-only game called Doki Doki Panic and switched some sprites around.

    The Japanese Super Mario Brothers 2 was eventually released on Super Mario All-Stars for the SNES as "The Lost Levels".

  5. Nah. It's not bigger. by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative
    Not even close. Hollywood films alone account for about $63 billion.

    By comparison, IBM has revenues of about $80 billion per year.

  6. The Smaller Screen by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Informative

    What exactly is this "Hollywood" that Matthew Yi claims is smaller than the $10B "Game Industry" in TFA? Maybe it doesn't include the $14B US ($32B global) record industry: a business run out of LA, mostly, and NYC, even if it's 80% owned in Tokyo/Sony, Berlin/BMG and Paris/Vivendi-Universal. Is it just movies (not TV, either)? The actual scale of "filmed entertainment" revenue (not including music videos, part of the "recorded music" industry) was $75.3B globally, before the predicted 7.5% growth rate for 2004 (ie. $81B). Porn movies and website subscriptions alone have a global revenue of $8-10B. Maybe video games are bigger than Hollywood the same way that John Lennon was bigger than Jesus.

    --

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    make install -not war

  7. Re:Another leveling factor by Ambassador+Kosh · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ask the people that play everquest that question. :) Many people that play MMOs have 2+ copies of the game. I have met some people that have 8 copies of the game, 8 copies of every expansion etc. It is pretty sick but people do it.

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    Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD! :)
  8. Re:Apples and Oranges by Red+Pointy+Tail · · Score: 2, Informative


    I think the head-count do matter, especially when it is the movie industry vs the game industry. It is much easier to reach a saturation point for games - and since the business is so good, we will probably see a proliferation of titles coming soon, and possibly not enough new hardcore gamers to play them.

    Another related factor on why head-count matters is that movies occupy a much shorter attention time that a game - after 3 hours max you're done with the movie, but game can take days or weeks. Revenue for movies can grow by encouraging people to go to the cinemas more often, but this will be harder for games since a game already will take up much of your time - unless completion times are shortened and the games made more stupid so that most can whizz through it in a day.

  9. Not just Apples and Oranges, just plain wrong! by PenguinOpus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Movies gross more than Games... always have, maybe always will. The stupid comparison made here is one that the game industry loves to make when trying to get mindshare... Compare movie box office versus game software/hardware sales.

    If you include DVD/media sales of movies, movies win. If you don't include console hardware sales, movies win.

    The movie industry (worldwide) grosses $180B. US movie industry grosses 63B. Box office only accounts for 26% of revenue.

    reference: http://www.factbook.net/wbglobal_rev.htm