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Game Industry Not Bigger Than Hollywood
The Grumpy Gamer has a counterpoint to the oft mentioned argument that the games industry is bigger business than the movie industry. From the article: "The domestic US box office is estimated to be around $9B for 2004, and this is where the myth starts to take life. The problem is the movie industry is a lot bigger then just the U.S. box office. DVD sales and rentals for 2003 topped $16B. VHS sales and rentals for 2003 was $6.4B. VHS sales are declining fast, but most of that will just shift over to DVDs, which brings the grand total for non-box office movie sales to over $20B, twice the figure for the entire game industry."
People can check out my supplemental arguments to the idiotic article posted the other day here:/ worst_a rticle_e.shtml
http://www.jackphelps.net/archives/2004/12
or here:
Games are bigger than movies
Matthew Yi doesn't say what he's comparing the $10b figure to. My guess is that it's the oft-quoted ~$9.6b domestic box offices revenue figure. Both figures are domestic, but he is leaving out the important $21b home video market and the aftermarket licensing market (pay-per-view, public performance, etc.). I don't know the exact size of the latter, but according to ABN Amro in 2000 it was roughly 28% of the total dollars (probably about $8b domestic then, but my guess is that it's dropped off some). Hollywood produces a lot of porn, too. You want to throw that $8b in there, Yi?
How do you play your games and movies?
The $10b figure includes hardware. Consoles. Do I need to say that again? The $21b domestic video market requires dedicated players, too, and Yi ignored those in his analysis. Probably the most relevent statistic Yi could have used for the domestic games market, then, is the ~$7.15b 2003 North American games software sales stat from Push Research.
What the hell is Hollywood?
Okay, I understand that the guy is talking about movies, but he never even says that. He says "Hollywood" again and again. Even if he were using the abovementioned $9.6b gross domestic box office reciepts figure, he's wrong to call it "hollywood," because that figure includes a number of movies (albeit small) not produced at all by Hollywood, and does not include Hollywood's exported box office reciepts. That's akin to some sick hybrid between GDP and GNP where you count only good produced in the US and by US companies, and it tells you nothing and reeks of stupid journalist.
The month of November
Yi cites November as a killer month he considers demonstrative of the growth in games, and my personal opinion is that this is equally rotten analysis. November included the release of Halo 2, Metroid Prime 2, Halflife 2, a peripheral sales boom from the October 26th GTA: San Andreas release, and probably the 200,000 Nintendo DS units sold in the first week of release. What that means is that there has never been a month in gaming equivalent to that month, and there probably won't be in all of 2005 unless you count console releases, which again are hardly a relevent comparison.
Read jack phelps dot net
Except that they aren't really getting rid of late fees. They're changing the nomenclature.
Here's how it works:
You rent a movie and have a due date. You also have a week long grace period. The effect is that the due date is effectively at the end of that grace period. At the end of that grace period (the real due date), you are forced to buy that video. No late fee, or so it seems.
If you decide that you didn't want to buy that video, you can return it within 30 days and get your money back, but less a "restocking" fee. Think about this a little more. You rent a movie. You keep it longer than they wanted (you're late). You can return it, but they're going to charge you a fee. Hello late fee!
Anyone that believes that this policy change was the end of late fees is an idiot.
Read this article to find out why there is such a big difference in the figures (it's a little old, but informative).