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Game Industry Bigger Than Hollywood
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."
People don't buy movie tickets months in advance for an opening weekend, so that's really not a fair comparison. This also doesn't take into account Hollywood's DVD sales which are quite impressive.
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What about UT2004. I'm sorry, that was a blockbuster game too, if anything is.
That's what I thought...
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
The rich, detailed, immersive settings for what used to be entirely passive entertainment can now, with the current technology, be used for interactive entertainment.
All those wonderful spy-drama, fantasy, and sci-fi worlds that used to be the exclusive domain of movies? Now their realism is being delivered to you in a way that you can actually be in - if you're open to the experience.
The coolest voice ever.
MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft get a hit of cash up front and then involve monthly revenue. Hollywood has nothing like that.
Most games cost between $30 and $50, no-matter what platform you're buying for. How much is a movie ticket? $8 to $10 for tickets or $20 to $30 for DVDs. How much do games cost to make vs. the revenue they bring in?
Very true, and I was thinking the same thing when I read the blurb. Further, they don't include sales of DVD players themselves either, whereas the games industry most certainly includes the hardware sales dollars from dedicated consoles. Then you can also talk about international distribution and other market's native films, etc., etc.. Hollywood (and television in general) still makes many, many times what the videogame industry does.
So can books.......
A movie is $10/unit. A video game is $50/unit. Let's divide your numbers by five and then talk.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Mainly, Hollywood can release a movie, get box office, sell the DVD, license the movie to networks, and sell other rights (for a TV show based on it, sequels), while a game sells and if it doesn't sell well, it's dead in the water
The Book Industry garnered $23.4 billion in 2003 - and that was a flat recession year. When video games pass books in dollar volume, then we will know the end of civilisation is at hand.
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This industry is ours. It's profits and technology will become one with our own. It's programmers will be hired and worked into mindless drones. Resistance is Futile. Surrender you IP and prepare to be bought out. Resistance is futile. People will buy our crappy games as long as we continue to pay retailers to promote them. Lower your morals and prepare to watch us take all of the billions that could have been yours. The comglomerate will prevail. Challenge Everything(TM), except our margins.
May the Maths Be with you!
I honestly don't mind spending the money on a game that i can play for sometimes nearly 100 hours or more... (i'm an RPG fanatic) It sure beats paying 10 bucks for a movie that chances are sucks... most hollywood movies these days are putting so much money into FX and advertising, that they are forgetting the fundementals... (story, acting... etc...), something that the video game industry is deffinately kicking hollywood's butt at.... so i don't mind giving them the cash for a far superior form of entertainment
Its really about interaction isnt it? Movies are passive, the theater experience is mixed at best, etc. While I was playing Doom3 and Half Life 2 I would seldomly tell myself "Wow, this is pretty cinematic, its like a movie I'm controlling."
People like two way media. Look at us, we're posting on a big geeky weblog. Why? That's the question Hollywood can't address with its movies, celebrity star system, over-used CGI, and "safe/non-controversial" movies. I'm sure Joe and Jane Sixpack don't really care, but as people divest from Hollywood, the more Hollywood will cater strictly to the LCD. Arguably, they've reached that point long ago.
I see maybe three or four movies a year now. Hollywood can have me and my money, but they need to release some better content. Something original or something that challenges me. They need to step up to the persistant angry religious letter writers. They need to fix the theaters so if a movie claims to start at 8, it will start at 8, not 8:22. 15 minutes of trailers (which should be coming after the movie before the credits as far as I'm concered) and 8 minutes of commercials/trivia is a good way to lose my 9 dollars.
...game companies don't sue their customers.
I would much rather give a game for Christmas than a CD or DVD, knowing that my money is not helping to finance corporate lawsuits against thirteen year-old girls living with her single mom in HUD housing.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
As a team owner in a video game, you get to do things that way you wish the idiot owners in the real world would do them. In most sports games, this involves not making or not making the trades that your favorite team made. Maybe in NHL 2005 it involves getting together with the other owners to fire the stupid commissioner and replace him with someone who knows more about hockey than basketball.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
If you can buy a $500 video card, a $50 game is nothing.
I know I personally will not be needing to buy any more games for about a year, now that I have San Adreas.
The better the games get, the less the appeal for the newer games. Movies wear out much faster.
Someone had to do it.
For the comparison to be equitable, day-of videogame sales must exclude preorders. That, or the sales and rental markets should be included for both media.
The rental market for PC games is difficult to gauge. Almost nowhere are computer games rented. Instead, cybercafes rent access to machines on which the games are all full-installed with site licenses (to avoid piracy). To accurately measure the secondary market value of PC games, one must include the cost of using a cybercafe with deductions for the operating cost of the facility. Good luck finding concrete data on this.
Sure, and a few engineers can always start their own car company. I wish them luck against the entrenched power of Detroit.
The original poster's point is that we are living in a second Gilded Age, a second age of robber barons. This age will end eventually, but the serfs will have to suffer a bit more before they start rebelling.
The lines between the media themselves are blurring. Games become like books with complex interweaving stories, and like movies in terms of realistic graphics or cinematics. Movies became more like games with the popularity of 3d... much of the techniques for 3d rendering can be applies between both - and in the future graphic cards may be able to render realtime that which is currently rendered by farms. MMORPG's can add on content like your weekly episodes or even - blah - sometimes like an online soap opera.
Seriously, I predict that smart companies in the future will merge the mediums (and hopefully produce some decent product). Think games with believeable characters, cinematic cutscenes/play, studio recorded music and more.
Inevitably ending in a wave of shit of course, but there are bound to be some real gems that shine through it all.
Even if the headline is wrong (as many claim), with the influence gaming have on society today why aren't there more people in academia researching this?
Why aren't there more university courses teaching it?
One reason why games isn't accepted by the mainstream as culture or art is of course the immaturity of the industry. And I don't mean it hasn't existed long, I am talking about the age of the developers and the attitude of the industry. Again and again polls show that the averge gamer is in fact somewhere between 25 and 30 years old, and there are are a lot more female gamers than people think. However, average age of the people working in the gaming industry is actually much lower (I know several), and the games created and the ways they are sold seem to mostly cater to the segment "early teenage American male".
And in this segment, violence sells, nude women sells. One of the few things I dislike about Planescape:Torment for instance is the rampant "big tit-itis" in the artwork.
So anyway, I would like to see more mature games, and not mature as "full of sex". The number one thing for me when buying a game is a well thought out plot with interesting characters. Then it doesn't matter if it is a shooter (Half-Life, Thief3, Deus Ex) or a role-playing game (anything from Bioware/Black Isle basically). These games are no nobel prize winners in literature of course, but still good enough for me.
I want more good writers in the gaming industry, and less graphics engine geeks. More Warren Specter, Greg Zeschuk, Ray Muzyka, less John Carmack.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die