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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."
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.
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.
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.
Really? As a hardcore gamer some of the best games I've ever played have come out in the last few years. Fallout 3, Bioshock, Orange Box, Call of Duty 4, Mass Effect, GTA4, STALKER, Geometry Wars, GH3, God of War 2 to name a few from a massive list.
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.
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.
"Duke Nukem, who at best was two dimensional."
I think you're forgetting about this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_3D
Well I'm guessing they'd blame movie piracy. "Nobody goes to the movies because they download them instead, omg, what are we going to do?"
The last thing they'd concede is that video games are clearly a better value. You can buy most of them on release day. You take games home (or download them) and play them as much as you want, or at least for a month on subscription games. On the other hand, going to the theater is stupid-expensive (that's a formal metric), and you go home with nothing. So... four evenings for $40+ or a bunch of nights for $40+?
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.