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More Americans Play Video Games Than Go To Movies
New research from the NPD Group has found that the number of Americans who play video games has surpassed the number who go to movies. In a survey of over 11,000 people, 63% had played a video game within the past six months, while only 53% had gone to a movie. They also found that the purchase of game consoles was on the rise, as were new methods of accessing the games themselves, such as playing over a social networking site or downloading a game onto a mobile phone. The report said, "the average gamer spent just over $38 per month on all types of gaming content" in the first three months of 2009, adding that "video games account for one-third of the average monthly consumer spending in the US for core entertainment content, including music, video, games."
I'd play more video games myself, but I've been waiting like 15 years for Duke Nukem Forever to come out! Now, what am I going to do?!?!
Can the MPAA sue us for that?
Data note: Information in this press release was derived from The NPD Group's "Entertainment Trends In America" consumer tracking study. The study is conducted online ...
Flawed.
My work here is dung.
I also don't own a TV. Let me drone on about that for a while...
It would be interesting to know, out of the folks that still go to movie theatres, how many of them go to see them in the imax format. With many families having big screen tvs at home, I'm sure many of them (as I do) wait until it comes out on dvd. The one exception to that is if its a movie I'm interested in watching and its at an imax theatre, as the imax experience with a 6 story movie screen is hard to replicate at home.
Now all World of Warcraft and Second Life have to do to take over the world are sponsor some kind of in-game theater/movie experience. I can see it now:
Blizzard announces new skill tree for all classes: Theater Employment skills, featuring 733T skillz like floor sweeping and garbage collecting. New race specific skill introduced: Blood and Night Elf females can now train in the Candy Striper professions.
There will even be a new mount: The handicap wheelchair: Available only when movement is debuffed.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
I doubt the cause of this is the games; they haven't gotten any better lately in my opinion.
--
Andy
I've been waiting like 15 years for Duke Nukem Forever to come out! Now, what am I going to do?
Duke Nukem is Apogee's answer to Snake Plissken, played by Kurt Russell in John Carpenter's Escape films. Design your own Snake-alike character, find someone who sounds like Russell or Jon St. John to voice him, and put him in your favorite moddable PC shooter.
The economy's in the toilet, ticket prices are up and Hollywood just released another bunch of rehashed crap.
Let's say that any reasonable $60 game provides at least 20 hours of entertainment. That works out to $3 an hour. If you get a solid RPG, that's more like 60 to 80 hours of interactive entertainment that you can enjoy whenever you want at home.
For many of us, buying last year's game drives the price down to $30 or $20 a game, skewing the ratio even further, making it likely you pay somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 cents an hour.
Going to a movie is $12.50 for 90 minutes of non interactive entertainment, which is $8.33/hour and that doesn't even factor in the cost of transportation, snacks, and the trip to olive garden beforehand.
Dollar for dollar, video gaming is cheaper and more convenient than a trip to the movies.
Before the new Star Trek came out i seriously cannot say what the last movie I saw in a theater was. I can certainly say in that time I've spent more money on video games then movies. This is mostly due to lack of quality content coming out of hollywood. What it comes down to is value for you buck. The new S.Trek was worth it to me but I would defiantly get more entertainment out of buying a new video game with that 30 dollars spent on an evening to the theater. Just like so many shovelware video games, movies are no diffrent, it's up to hollywood to decide which content is crap and which they want to sink cash into in order to turn a profit. Either way both hollywood and video game industry is turning billions in profit, so why should they bitch, nobody else is making that kind of money on poor product.
Interaction > Sedation A good game is still way more entertaining than a good movie.
The era of movie theatres is gone. People play games because they're convenient.
Is this really any surprise? Movie theatres are inconvenient, relatively expensive, and you have to take pot luck when it comes to movie goers you might have to put up with. Most people have a TV and a DVD player. Anyone who cares about sound and can afford it has decent speakers. Likewise those who care about big screens they're not so expensive that they're completely out of reach for most. So the advantage that movie theatres had when that technology was out of reach is gone. What's more nothing beats the privacy of your own home. If you live alone or with people who'll put up with it you can watch in your underwear if you like. If you're on call, no problem, just hit pause if the phone rings. Want to get intimate with your date? Well you're much less likely to get arrested if you do at home. If that's not enough the price of food at home isn't overblown and the quality is as good as you make it.
A much better comparison would be spend on DVD vs computer games. Even that's not a fair comparison if you count mobile games because most people would still prefer a decent size screen and don't want to re-encode to watch on a postage stamp sized on. It's a hell of a lot easier to pull out your mobile on your commute than to pull out (and carry) a laptop or DVD player. What's more if your commute isn't very long chances are you can find a game that can be played in the short time you have, vs watching a movie or DVD over several days.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Going to a movie is $12.50 for 90 minutes of non interactive entertainment
Or perhaps $7.50 for a matinee. But what makes movies an even worse deal is that the $7.50 or $12.50 is per person, which adds up if you're taking the family to a G or PG rated film. With a video game, on the other hand, four players can plug in controllers and smash the crap out of one another or blow one another to smithereens until the cows come home. A video game doesn't charge extra for more players unless the publisher is greedy enough to disable shared-screen play and spawn installations.
When a night out to the movies for a family of four costs MORE than a video game I am not surprised that the average family decides to buy the video game instead.
That's just more value for your money. Especially, when you can just wait a few months and get it through your Blockbuster/Netflix membership and see it for a bare fraction of the price.
What are theaters really offering these days anyways? Loud assholes that won't shut up during the movie? Dozens of people that won't shut their phones off and insist on texting during the movie (creating a distracting sea of lights beneath you)? $5 dollar soft drinks? No ice-tea or other healthy alternatives?
Basically just a bunch of over priced crap.
20 years ago I would go the movies and then decide what I was going to watch. With all the options I have at home (DVR'd TV shows with no commercials), On-Demand movies, half-dozen consoles and hundreds of video games, it will take a really fantastic movie to get me out in the theaters.
Most of the movies I just decide to watch when it hits the rentals. In fact, with Blockbuster and Netflix you can pre-order them to be in your list anyways.
I still spend over $38 a month on games because i am supporting 2 MMORPG accounts i dont really use much. But just barely... I am mainly playing Flatout 2 online, a 2 year old game that was $30 new! Have that down to $.05 per hour or less :)
Porn doesn't count toward core entertainment? If not then that $38 or so will be half my entertainment $$ not a third ;) A few of us actually pay you know...although being grandfathered in 10 years ago at $10/month instead of $30 helps!
Well that depends strongly on when the survey was done. The best movies come out in May, June, and July. And the best video games come out in September, October, and November. (I know I'm generalizing, but bear with me.)
So, if the survey was taken in February, then the best games came out within the last six months, but the best movies have not, and that should cause the survey to tilt toward the video game side.
...And more Americans watch dvds than go to the arcade. What a dumb stat.
a) In a good year now, I'll go to the cinema twice. Three times, tops. That isn't because I don't like the cinema "experience," either; I still love it. I don't, however, enjoy watching crap, and it is exceptionally rare for Hollywood to make good films these days.
The suits have taken over in Hollywood, and their thinking is actually what is going to possibly destroy the industry, even though for some inexplicable reason, everyone still listens when they insist their doctrine of making sequels and prequels and retreads over and over and over again is good business sense.
It isn't. When was the last time you saw a cinematic remake of a 60s TV show (other than Star Trek, of course; said for the sake of the legions of idiots who would respond with that, while thinking they were hilariously funny and ingeniously clever. Yes, I know you well, Slashdot) which made hundreds of millions of dollars? It doesn't happen. It's either the reasonably new or relatively innovative/risky movies that are the really big earners. The Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight. If Hollywood wants to survive, the suits have to go, and the industry needs to learn that creativity is what really gets major money from audiences; not canned business as usual. We don't want repetitive garbage; we want to be surprised and emotionally impacted and made to think.
Please, film industry; start making good movies on a regular basis. I very much *want* to go to the cinema more, and if you make good films, you will get my money. I just refuse to pay to watch rubbish. Give me more films with the same level of quality as the Matrix (the first one, and to a lesser extent the second) and The Dark Knight, and I will go and see two of them a month if you make them that often. Most of the rest of us probably would too, I'm guessing.
b) The economic factor. For the full experience, I will spend $20 AUD at the cinema now; $12 approximately for my ticket, and the rest on popcorn and Coke. (Which is horribly expensive, but given that I do it so rarely I justify it on that basis. In previous years when there were good movies on more often, if I still wanted food, I'd get some shopping bags or a backpack and load that up with stuff from the supermarket; so the cinema still got the money for my ticket. I only pirate movies as an advance screening if it's something I *really* want to see, like The Dark Knight, and I still go and see them afterwards anyway, partly because I like cinema trips, and partly because cam quality is always bad)
The point though is that for maybe twice that, ($40 or so) if I've already got a console, I can buy a game which I can then play whenever I want. A cinema trip is a one off; it's fun, but you spend the $20 and then it's gone. $20 will also buy me a month's worth of playtime in World of Warcraft and a lot of other MMORPGs as well.
If you've got the money, a trip to the cinema every so often is one of the most fun things I know of to do; I've always loved it. If you don't have so much money, however, it doesn't make much sense to pay for a one-off experience, when the same amount of money could keep you entertained for a month (or longer) if you spent it a different way. Games thus tend to be more cost effective.
c) The immersion/interaction factor. I love a good movie. However, the unfortunate reality is that, no matter how good your movie is, it's never going to have the same amount of emotional impact for me that a game will, simply because with a game, I'm in control of the character on the screen, so it feels as though I'm actually inside it that much more. With a movie, I'm watching something. With a game, I'm doing something. The T4 movie means I'm watching Christian Bale shoot T800s. A T4 game means I'm shooting T800s. Which one do you think I'm going to want more?
There are reasons why games are going to be a more compelling medium, which Hollywood can't do much about. However, there is one thing Hollywood can do, and needs to do if it wants to survive; it needs to start making truly good movies on a regular basis again. One truly standout movie every 2-4 years isn't cutting it; there need to be at least that many in one year.
Modern game makers now have music scores and scripts and god help us "plots!!". The reason people are spending more money on games is pretty obvious, modern games are replacing movies and then throwing in a interactive layer movies totally lack. Its a bit like when movies got sound ie talkies and then watching those still pushing the silent era format go broke.
I know we humans like entertainment, but I really wonder how much productivity society looses because of video games.
46137
... Eve Online!
Yes, before I "discovered" that damn game I was going out several nights a week, wasting my money in pussy and beer. Now I wake up and fire up my 3 clients, get to work late, come back and fire them up again until I drop asleep.
After more than a year with this routine I have already paid-off 3 formerly maxed-out credit cards (2 more to go). All for $35/month.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
Video games are a better value than theaters. DVDs are a better value also. What would be really cool, and probably a better value, would be if we could have a place we could watch movies while sitting in our cars. I'd probably call it a Drive In Movie Theater, and I bet it would catch on really quickly. Of course, you wouldn't be able to have 18 screens, sticky arm rests, noisy patrons, cell phone interruptions, and the rest of the glorious indoor theater fun.
I played a MUD right up until 2002. Please don't tell anyone. The MUD was DragonRealms from play.net. The average nightly players are still near 1000. All text baby. Prep Fireball, wait, cast!
My first text based game was ZORK on a C64. The farmer's sons were insane.
Mario?
Shhhh! Don't tell anyone (especially the MPAA), but you can already "go to the movies" in Second Life -- there are a number of virtual movie theaters on the grid and they get their content from YouTube, private machines, or from a movie streaming service.
The popcorn is usually free but unfortunately, like in RealLife, you shouldn't expect the theater to be chatter-free when other people are there. Of course, you could just buy or create your own virtual television set and enjoy them in your own virtual home instead.
Though I doubt Linden Labs will be sponsoring any events around one of them any time soon, you may be able to get virtually employed by at least one of them if you were so inclined.
systems like the Wii and games like Guitar Hero which encourage participation.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
wasting my money in pussy and beer
The first sentence sounds sarcastic, about devolving from a social person to an eve addict sounds sarcastic. The second sentence brings up a very improved financial status, which is a good thing, especially in this economic crysis. I am under the impression that under American society norms, your change is for the worse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ
spread this to all your linfag friends.
The key phrase there is "go to the movies". Around me movies are around $10-$12 a ticket, any food you buy is going end up costing more than the ticket to get in. For two people one and a half to two hours of entertainment is going to set you back at least $50 most of the time. For that same money I can buy a new game (yea technically for the 360 and PS3 they are $60 but someone always has them on sale the week of release) and get 2-3x more entertainment per dollar at a minimum and 10x more on average. Worse yet most theatres are a lousy experience at any cost. I took in Star Trek a couple weeks back and sat in a fairly crowded theatre while people around kept text messaging or talking, the near-sighted projectionist left the film slightly out of focus for the entire movie and I had to watch 20 minutes worth of commercial not including the credits before the movie even started. It was a quick reminder of why I go to the movies about once a year which is about how long it evidently takes me to forget how bad the last experience was. On the other hand I rent and buy a ton of DVD's, its cheaper and a better experience.
I can't tell you the number of time's I would have pummeled the 'report to moderator' button on my armrest.
He reads, but he does not understand...
Same store sales are down in all the video game retailer. Anyone see Gamestop's stock fall like a brick today after the crap earnings estimates?
GTA4 sucks balls, as well as every other of that horrible series.
Call of Duty 4? Are you serious? It's just the next tiny step in FPS time wasters
GH3 rules.
Bioshock was decent, at least what I saw on PS3.
But what about all the people using netflix and stuff? Don't they count as people?
what the hell does he know about Video games or consoles!! :P
Does this spell the end of the era where the court jester makes more money than the king? Oh no, how will we cope? Actors may have to settle for a realistic wage if nobody is willing to shell out big money to watch them dance. It's the end of civilisation as we know it!!!
"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - Sir Humphrey Appleby
They call this serious stats? Let's pretend for a moment that ALL the people who had gone to the movies had also played video games. Is this really supposed to make us wonder if video games influence movie going?
50 years ago, movie tickets cost $0.15. Applying the consumer price index we find that the price today would be $1.12 if movie ticket prices had gone up in the same average proportion as other prices.
Considering how much films today depend on special effects, and considering that so many effects are done by computers, one would believe that the cost of producing a movie should be lower than fifty years ago.
Some people say that "all capitalists are greedy pigs", but obviously some pigs are greedier than others.
They compare games played to going to a movie.
I think it would have looked differently, if they had compared them to watching tv (or p2p files) at home...
But I bet they think that BitTorrent is some new game that people play. :P
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Why would you EVER pay even 25 cents an hour to play video games when you could MAKE 50 cents an hour
Because it costs tens of thousands of dollars to move your family to Greater Seattle near the video game testing operations.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Call of Duty 4 was named Game of the Year by numerous publications and has proven to be immensely popular amongst gamers. That game is easily one of the greatest shooters of all time.
Your comments regarding GTA4 come off as trollish and ignorant.
Bioshock decent? Wow.