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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 $20B, twice the figure for the entire game industry."
So...
Which sells more merchandising?
Which sells more novel versions?
Which sells more subscriptions?
Which employs more people?
Which sells more disk media?
Which sells more theater tickets?
Here-in lies the problem with comparing any two industries.
no
And Movie Video Games.
You can't exactly say that the industries are entirely disparate. Many blockbuster movies become video games, and we've had a spate of video-games turned movies. Which industry are they a part of? Where does their revenue count?
It's pretty hard to have an objective statistic with these two industries.
That's actually a good question, and I'm too lazy to look up the answer.
On a related note though, I just want a pay per view type of thing for movies already in the theaters. I'd gladly pay the price of a ticket to watch a movie in the comfort of my own home. In fact, I often wait for movies to come out on DVD rather than go see them in the theaters.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
This isn't a proper comparison, and it never was in my mind. If you go to a movie in a Theatre, you get to SEE the movie in its entirety, but you don't own it. On the contrary, if you want to get the full experience out of a video game, you'll either rent it until you are finished, or buy it from the store. You can't compare these 1 to 1 because you can't pay 8$ to play a game for 3 hours and be 'completely satisfied' and get closure from it. Now they want to compare Movies, VHS, and DVD sales to .. it looks like just plain Video Game Sales.. What about Video game rentals? How about all the gaming events that they have around the country? Im sure there's money being spent there.. Does this include arcade games that people plug coins into?
You can't just take a look at opening sales of a movie theatre and compare it to opening sales of a video game and claim either is bigger than the other.
At least, it seems flawed to me, but I've been working all day and am probably fried. Anyone have any opinions on this?
Its Deluxe, son. Deluxe!
Even though the bottom line of the movie houses dont see this, there seems to be a huge buying and selling of used games. Ive seen used LOTR xbox games that I can get for a 25% then any new ones. Of course, you needs to make sure they work.
Heck, even amazon.com encourages the buying and selling of used products.
There's a good article on Gamasutra (reg. req.) about game rentals, arguing that rentals may actually be hurting developers.
Excuse for being an idiot, but where do the games like Shrek 2 and movies like Tits & Guns AKA Lara Croft classify themselves?
That is without even mentioning the Star Wars frachise which collected a tidy 6 digit sum out of X Wing, Tie Fighter, Rebellion, Tie Fighter vs X Wing, Jedi Knights and the extension packs for all of them.
These two industries are nowdays ONE industry. Every decent movie has a lame game tucked on it and vice versa. Doom the movie... Yuck...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Just to put things into perspective, WalMart does about $250 billion in sales annually. That's a single company taking in 10X the annual revenue of two entire industries combined. Now that's impressive.
Actually, I find that sequels, the longer they extend, cater to a different audience than the one that made them famous in the first place:
Final Fantasy X-2. Heck, anything after 7. It's crap. All crap. In 7, the cutscenes are minor, like in the older games, and drive the story in ways that can't be driven interactively.
8 and on seem like an exercise in doing what is necessary to get to the next cutscene. I couldn't force myself to digest all of X-2, after 8 and X, it was enough. I haven't played 9, but I'm tempted to considering all the people that like 8, X, and X-2 say it sucks. These people coincidentally hate 7 and haven't played anything earlier.
I remember buying FF1 the day it came out in the U.S. and being AWE STRICKEN by a stupid blue screen with text that faded in.... Between the music and the contents of that text, I was in love immediately.
Now I get something that probably took 5 months to render that amounts to a very well-done computer-generated britney spears video. Strangely, that stupid blue screen was much more interesting.