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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."
What about UT2004. I'm sorry, that was a blockbuster game too, if anything is.
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.
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.
Da Blog
Mod parent up, please.
The problem is that when a new entertainment market starts creating serious money it becomes bastardized. Happened to music, happened to TV, happened to movies and rest assured, it will happen to games.
Hell, you could argue that it has already happened. A sign? All of the games in the list are sequels; which almost guarantees a base of sales. Some of them are good, some of them aren't, but there's hardly anything new or fresh offered in games nowadays; since seen genres with newer graphics are easy to sell we still see FPS, MMORPGs, GTA (which WAS fun, but i don't want to play the same game for the third time), sport simulations and so. Publishers simply go for the quick buck. I died a bit when Lucasarts canned the sequels for Sam & Max and Full Throttle to concentrate on Star Wars licences.
The only innovative thing i've seen from a major games publisher was Nintendo with it's DS; i haven't tried one yet but it looks good on paper and the touch screen and onboard WiFi are potentially great gaming aids. That could be a gateway to some interesting games, which knowing Nintendo, won't be too far away.