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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."

2 of 503 comments (clear)

  1. 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

  2. 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