Game Industry Bigger Than Hollywood 503
Ant writes "This SF Gate story says stacks of new releases for hungry video game enthusiasts mean it's boom time for an industry now even bigger than Hollywood. The $10 billion video game industry, which generates more revenue than Hollywood, has never released so many highly anticipated blockbuster titles in a single season. It started in August with the game title Doom 3, followed by The Sims 2 in September, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in October, then Halo 2, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Half-Life 2 last month. In November, sales of video games rose to $849 million, an 11 percent increase from the same month last year and up 77 percent from October, according to the industry research firm NPD Funworld. The industry set a milestone last month when Microsoft's Halo 2 -- a sequel to a futuristic game with an elaborate plot that pits humans against invading aliens -- surpassed Hollywood's opening-weekend movie box office record in just one day of sales."
Apples and Oranges (Score:3, Insightful)
Bleh (Score:5, Insightful)
All sequels (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oooh, so piracy DOESN'T hurt sales.. (Score:5, Insightful)
A new form of entertainment taking over (Score:5, Insightful)
All those wonderful spy-drama, fantasy, and sci-fi worlds that used to be the exclusive domain of movies? Now their realism is being delivered to you in a way that you can actually be in - if you're open to the experience.
Re:All sequels (Score:5, Insightful)
Something Hollywood finds next to impossible.
Re:All sequels (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:2, Insightful)
However the more Fanatical bought tickets weeks ahead for movies like Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and the Star Wars Prequels.
Recurring revenue, too... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most games cost between $30 and $50, no-matter what platform you're buying for. How much is a movie ticket? $8 to $10 for tickets or $20 to $30 for DVDs. How much do games cost to make vs. the revenue they bring in?
Re:All sequels (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Contrinutions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All sequels (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference between good sequels, and shoddy sequels which were just designed as quick cash machines. The Splinter Cell series and the latest Prince of Persia game are both guilty as charged, and basically any EA sports game.
Re:Gaming Industry Rise (Score:1, Insightful)
Not so fast, geekboys (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:1, Insightful)
Not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
Mainly, Hollywood can release a movie, get box office, sell the DVD, license the movie to networks, and sell other rights (for a TV show based on it, sequels), while a game sells and if it doesn't sell well, it's dead in the water
Re:Not so fast, geekboys (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oooh, so piracy DOESN'T hurt sales.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't say the same for myself and a few others I know. I downloaded Doom 3 and GTA, but haven't actually purchased them yet. I will, I just haven't.
I think the only game I purchased from these blockbusters was Metroid Prime 2.
I'm not gonna try to justify it. I knew it was wrong, I did it anyway, but it's interesting to point out that GTA, Halo 2, Doom 3, and HL2 were ALL heavily pirated and available weeks ahead of time. Thousands upon thousands of people downloaded and played them.
The question is, how many purchased, how many didn't? Even still, they performed quite well and no one's losing sleep for their lack of performance.
Just goes to show how people can make a mountain out of a mole hill when it comes to piracy. They make it seem like much more than it really is.. "If you download this game, how can I put braces on my kid's teeth?"
"Uh hm... well, considering your ONE game sold more than the best movie of all time, I think you'll do just fine with those braces."
Book Industry: $23.4 Billion in 2003 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not so fast, geekboys (Score:2, Insightful)
Which is about $5/hour...
A video game is $50/unit
Which could be as little as $1/hour.
I don't have a point either.
EAbrace, EAtend, EAxtinguish (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All sequels (Score:3, Insightful)
Time well spent (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Gaming Industry Rise (Score:3, Insightful)
People like two way media. Look at us, we're posting on a big geeky weblog. Why? That's the question Hollywood can't address with its movies, celebrity star system, over-used CGI, and "safe/non-controversial" movies. I'm sure Joe and Jane Sixpack don't really care, but as people divest from Hollywood, the more Hollywood will cater strictly to the LCD. Arguably, they've reached that point long ago.
I see maybe three or four movies a year now. Hollywood can have me and my money, but they need to release some better content. Something original or something that challenges me. They need to step up to the persistant angry religious letter writers. They need to fix the theaters so if a movie claims to start at 8, it will start at 8, not 8:22. 15 minutes of trailers (which should be coming after the movie before the credits as far as I'm concered) and 8 minutes of commercials/trivia is a good way to lose my 9 dollars.
Re:Book Industry: $23.4 Billion in 2003 (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because... (Score:3, Insightful)
I would much rather give a game for Christmas than a CD or DVD, knowing that my money is not helping to finance corporate lawsuits against thirteen year-old girls living with her single mom in HUD housing.
Re:I still have games that I have not played... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gaming Industry Rise (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Bleh (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that when a new entertainment market starts creating serious money it becomes bastardized. Happened to music, happened to TV, happened to movies and rest assured, it will happen to games.
Hell, you could argue that it has already happened. A sign? All of the games in the list are sequels; which almost guarantees a base of sales. Some of them are good, some of them aren't, but there's hardly anything new or fresh offered in games nowadays; since seen genres with newer graphics are easy to sell we still see FPS, MMORPGs, GTA (which WAS fun, but i don't want to play the same game for the third time), sport simulations and so. Publishers simply go for the quick buck. I died a bit when Lucasarts canned the sequels for Sam & Max and Full Throttle to concentrate on Star Wars licences.
The only innovative thing i've seen from a major games publisher was Nintendo with it's DS; i haven't tried one yet but it looks good on paper and the touch screen and onboard WiFi are potentially great gaming aids. That could be a gateway to some interesting games, which knowing Nintendo, won't be too far away.
Well, I think there's a cap to this market. (Score:3, Insightful)
I know I personally will not be needing to buy any more games for about a year, now that I have San Adreas.
The better the games get, the less the appeal for the newer games. Movies wear out much faster.
Re:All sequels (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing with a movie is that the experience is always the same. You sit, and the movie goes for a while. Innovation in movies has to come in the form of new plot ideas and new characters and so forth. So sequels in movies are not usually very much appreciated because in many ways we have seen the movie already.
Video games provide a much more diverse range of experiences. "The Sims 2", for instance, will not be "The Sims" again. It could in many ways be a completely different game, and you can bet there will be new things for a player to learn. They could call it something completely different -- the fact that they re-use a well-known brand doesn't mean that they are making the same game again. There's no new plot or characters simply because there wasn't any plot or characters in the first place.
If you want an example of a Hollywood-style sequel in the video game world, consider the ".hack" series. All four games are basically the same, it's just a somewhat long game that is really expensive.
Re:Book Industry: $23.4 Billion in 2003 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:3, Insightful)
Relatively few people buy one video game a year, on the other hand. The average among people who buy any at all is probably somwhere north of 3.
So the portion of the population that goes to movies - ever - is more than 3 times as great as the portion of the population that buys a video-game - ever.
Think about your own sphere of acquantances - how many people do you know who've never gone to see a movie? Even the Amish neighbors of the family farm in the midwest had gone to see a movie at least once in their lives, for christ's sake.
On the other hand, many of the people I know have never bought a video-game for themselves, but my little brother owns dozens and (counting the ones I bought when I was a kid) so do I; and the people I know are far more likely to be gamers than the general population.
Day-of sales or preorders? It's a mess. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
The rental market for PC games is difficult to gauge. Almost nowhere are computer games rented. Instead, cybercafes rent access to machines on which the games are all full-installed with site licenses (to avoid piracy). To accurately measure the secondary market value of PC games, one must include the cost of using a cybercafe with deductions for the operating cost of the facility. Good luck finding concrete data on this.
Re:poor programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, and a few engineers can always start their own car company. I wish them luck against the entrenched power of Detroit.
The original poster's point is that we are living in a second Gilded Age, a second age of robber barons. This age will end eventually, but the serfs will have to suffer a bit more before they start rebelling.
When you think about it though (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, I predict that smart companies in the future will merge the mediums (and hopefully produce some decent product). Think games with believeable characters, cinematic cutscenes/play, studio recorded music and more.
Inevitably ending in a wave of shit of course, but there are bound to be some real gems that shine through it all.
Re:Bleh (Score:4, Insightful)
Well some of us have been saying this for years. If the game industry were, overall, as creative as they were back in the golden age, you can be there'd be a lot fewer Nintendo fanatics, myself included, these days.
But even my admiration for Nintendo has limits. Do you know what the most original company ever to produce video games was? The (in my opinion) answer may not be what you expect.
It was Atari Games, an entity that, in my mind, encompasses their early arcade output pre-split-up, and their later, post-split arcade games. So many of their hits were created out of whole braincloth, because there was absolutely nothing like them before. Atari was the most original not just because they were first, but because even as late as the early 90s they were still making incredibly different, fun games. Midway Arcade Treasures (1) has a good handful of them, including Rampart, which I've already bored far too many people discussing, some of them here.
But we can all see where that got them. They made Toobin', KLAX, Gauntlet, Marble Madness and (whimper!) Rampart, but gamers, more and more, became drawn to things like Street Fighter 2, a game that was admittedly well-designed, but inspired way, way too many sequels and knock-offs. It's not like Nintendo's sequels, where they'll throw out all but the core concepts and design a new game around them (example: Yoshi's Island is a direct sequel to Super Mario World!), but more like the same game, with new characters and modestly different rules.
Fighting games, depending on who you ask, are what saved or ruined arcades. My money's on "ruined." This is something of a digression, but it's worth noting that the fighting game boom was one of the contributing factors to the atmosphere of genrefication that are both what's enabled video and computer gaming to become big business, and what's sapped so much of the creativity out of the field.
So where is the research, and the mature games? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why aren't there more university courses teaching it?
One reason why games isn't accepted by the mainstream as culture or art is of course the immaturity of the industry. And I don't mean it hasn't existed long, I am talking about the age of the developers and the attitude of the industry. Again and again polls show that the averge gamer is in fact somewhere between 25 and 30 years old, and there are are a lot more female gamers than people think. However, average age of the people working in the gaming industry is actually much lower (I know several), and the games created and the ways they are sold seem to mostly cater to the segment "early teenage American male".
And in this segment, violence sells, nude women sells. One of the few things I dislike about Planescape:Torment for instance is the rampant "big tit-itis" in the artwork.
So anyway, I would like to see more mature games, and not mature as "full of sex". The number one thing for me when buying a game is a well thought out plot with interesting characters. Then it doesn't matter if it is a shooter (Half-Life, Thief3, Deus Ex) or a role-playing game (anything from Bioware/Black Isle basically). These games are no nobel prize winners in literature of course, but still good enough for me.
I want more good writers in the gaming industry, and less graphics engine geeks. More Warren Specter, Greg Zeschuk, Ray Muzyka, less John Carmack.
Re:Bleh (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bleh (Score:4, Insightful)
A bit? I hate to break it to you, but there was *nothing* groundbreaking about FarCry. It was your standard Soldier of Fortune 2-esque FPS knockoff. The story was your typical "nazi scientist" drivel, the main character was, again, your typical no-nonsense hardcore spec-ops/government agent, the weapons were exceedingly average and typical, and finally, the much lauded AI was seriously wanting.
I played the game without reading the hype. I didn't experience anything special from the AI, so I started it up again on ultraextrahard (or whatever), and wandered around for a bit. As expected, the "tactic" of sniping one guy off and then gunning down his buddies worked flawlessly. Hell, after shooting one guy right next to a friend of his, his friend crept cautiously forward - no diving for cover, no wigging out and running, no going for reinforcements.
From my experiences, FarCry gets the award for "Most Overrated Game" this year. Sure, it was a decent FPS... but that was it. Doom 3, for all its linearity, at least had *suspense*.
And, simply put, you're either blind or running these games on a machine that an Xbox would put to shame. FarCry has "stunning" graphics while Half-Life 2's are "ordinary"? I'd suggest a trip to the optometrist or psychiatrist.
-lw