Games To Outsell Music, Video In UK 47
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."
Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all that hard to understand, considering how much they charge for a video game.
Re:Duh (Score:1, Interesting)
That's irrelevant. People could choose to spend the money they spend on games on music instead.
The real problem, as the article mentions, is that they are including gaming hardware sales in the figures.
Re:Duh (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Poor Comparison (Score:2, Interesting)