Games To Outsell Music, Video In UK

The BBC reports that for the first time, spending on games and game hardware will outstrip sales in the music and video industries. Quoting: "In the last five years the video games market has more than doubled in value, while music sales have stagnated. The good news for game makers in the report was balanced by grim tidings for high street retailers. 'The music and video market is not just suffering from a slowing of growth but a massive transfer of spend to online,' says Malcolm Pinkerton of Verdict Research. It is online sales of CDs and DVDs that have grown rapidly, rather than digital downloads, which still only account for around 4% of music and video sales."

Comments

So...

[Majik Sheff]

Video killed the video AND radio star?

Duh

[Eudial]

Not all that hard to understand, considering how much they charge for a video game.

Re:Duh

[Darkness404]

Yes, but look at the hour to price ratio. A CD is about an hour long, whereas a game is usually at least 30 hours if not more. A CD costs around $20 and a game around $50. The CD costs a whole lot more per hour than the game does.

Re:Duh

[WDot]

Not to mention that there's no guarantee that you'll finish a video game. You might get sick of the gameplay, or hit a wall that you can't surpass, or you'll have other games that you'd rather play instead. The CD would have to be a hell of an unlistenable album for one to not make it through once.

Also, DRM notwithstanding, you can use a CD in a lot more places than you can use a videogame. You can use it in your car, your computer, or your speaker setup. You can rip it to your hard drive and make derivative works with the songs or mix CDs/cassettes/mp3 players with your favorite tracks. A game can only be used on its given platform for its given purpose--gaming. Sure, some people make derivative works (mods, machinima) from video games, but it's much easier to slap a song on your home videos and webcam sessions than it is to animate and script a game world.

Re:Duh

[KDR_11k]

However, many games are so linear that every play-through is essentially the same and most interesting game situations that can arise just from the interaction of the player and game probably happen throughout one playthrough. Sure, you won't listen to the same track or CD non-stop but you'll probably mix it into your playlist and thus have it get played more often.

Score 0: Flamebait

[sleeponthemic]

I blame piracy!

Poor Comparison

[kramer2718]

They are including games and games hardware. To be fair, they should include dvd players big screen TVs and stereo systems.

Re:Poor Comparison

[Notabadguy]

You've hit the nail on the head. I'm *really* tired of seeing unprofessionally done surveys and studies and irrelevant comparisons make the news. In other news, consumers are spending FAR more money at McDonalds than at Burger King. I sampled two groups. The first group told me how much money they spend on average at Burger King per month. The second group told me how much they spend on average at McDonalds per month. They also included how much their gas bill was, the cost of their car, and a dollar value for the opportunity cost in time that they spent going to McDonalds. Can you believe it? McDonalds is more popular! *sigh* I feel that my own completely made up survey has about as much credibility as the last few surveys that have made their way onto the Slashdot boards.

Re:Poor Comparison

[petermgreen]

Yes and no, your TV and DVD player will work for any movie released over the last decade and probably the next decade.

In contrast if you want to continue following a game series you will have to buy a new console every 5-10 years (and then sometimes to piss you off even further they go and make one of the games exclusive to a portable console with maybe a re-release on a normal console a year or so later if you are lucky).

In any case you need the TV for gaming as well and DVD players are dirt cheap now so I doubt it significant impacts the comparison.