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Businesses The Almighty Buck Entertainment Games

Game Industry Not Bigger Than Hollywood 306

Posted by Zonk from the counterpoint dept.
The Grumpy Gamer has a counterpoint to the oft mentioned argument that the games industry is bigger business than the movie industry. From the article: "The domestic US box office is estimated to be around $9B for 2004, and this is where the myth starts to take life. The problem is the movie industry is a lot bigger then just the U.S. box office. DVD sales and rentals for 2003 topped $16B. VHS sales and rentals for 2003 was $6.4B. VHS sales are declining fast, but most of that will just shift over to DVDs, which brings the grand total for non-box office movie sales to over $20B, twice the figure for the entire game industry."
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Game Industry Not Bigger Than Hollywood

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  • Woo (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @04:50PM (#11151863)

    Maybe they'll hit $25B if the keep getting torrent and eMule trackers taken down. They need the money.

    • Re:Woo (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grumpygrodyguy ( 603716 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @06:12PM (#11153111)
      Maybe they'll hit $25B if the keep getting torrent and eMule trackers taken down. They need the money.

      Yes they will. Since the only legitimate service provided by hollywood is providing films to be shown in public theatres, their very dubious claim of controlling the rights of further distribution is dying.

      Going to the movies is like going to a themepark, it's an experience that's worth paying for. Millions of americans will still 'go to the movies' regardless of file-sharing.

      Hollywood was doing just fine before the advent of television, VHS, and the internet...and it will do just fine afterwards. But all of the 'free money' they've reaped from the near zero production costs of TV, Cable, VHS, and DVD is no longer theirs to claim. If they can create a distribution channel that's in any way superior to searcheable and indexed peer-to-peer file sharing then people may be willing to pay for it.

      Until then the copyright monopoly will be increasingly threatened by a competitor that offers superior services. If this country is truly interested in free-trade, it will ensure that the best option for the consumer prevails.

  • Which is bigger? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @04:50PM (#11151870)
    The real question: Is the rental industry bigger than the Movie theater industry?

    • Re:Which is bigger? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by flewp ( 458359 )
      That's actually a good question, and I'm too lazy to look up the answer.

      On a related note though, I just want a pay per view type of thing for movies already in the theaters. I'd gladly pay the price of a ticket to watch a movie in the comfort of my own home. In fact, I often wait for movies to come out on DVD rather than go see them in the theaters.
    • Yes they are.

      I see the quote often when people bitch about Valenti's Boston Strangler quote about VHS.

  • But... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gandell ( 827178 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @04:52PM (#11151894)
    Do these figures take into account game rentals?

    • Re:But... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by RotJ ( 771744 )
      There's a good article on Gamasutra (reg. req.) about game rentals [gamasutra.com], arguing that rentals may actually be hurting developers.

      • Re:But... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by snorklewacker ( 836663 )
        Rentals hurt development of games where the answer is the first option in "rent or buy?", a bit of advice given in many game reviews. Frankly, if a game is that short, I have a problem with paying $40 or $50 for it anyway. A movie for two with popcorn and soda still doesn't cost $40.

        Rentals force developers to create games with enough depth and/or replay value to want to own. Otherwise, the price has to come down. I like Katamari Damacy for its replay value, but I'm rather glad I only paid $20 for it.

      • Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by NanoGator ( 522640 )
        "There's a good article on Gamasutra (reg. req.) about game rentals, arguing that rentals may actually be hurting developers."

        Are the rentals hurting the developers, or is it the flood of half-assed games that make us leary about investing $50?
    • Do these figures take into account game rentals?
      Probably not, but let's summarise the numbers:

      US game and console sales: $10B

      US box office: $9B
      US DVD sales and rentals: $16B
      US VHS sales and rentals: $6.4B
      US movie total: $30B+

      Do you really think game rentals are going to close that $20B gap?

  • Wait... what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bludstone ( 103539 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @04:52PM (#11151897)
    So...

    Which sells more merchandising?
    Which sells more novel versions?
    Which sells more subscriptions?
    Which employs more people?
    Which sells more disk media?
    Which sells more theater tickets?

    Here-in lies the problem with comparing any two industries.

    • Re:Wait... what? (Score:5, Funny)

      by JaffaKREE ( 766802 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @04:54PM (#11151930)
      Which sells more theater tickets?

      Well, this one I think I can answer for you.
      • > Which sells more theater tickets?

        >Well, this one I think I can answer for you.

        That was the point, I'm pretty sure that he also knew which one drove more disk media purchases and which drove more subscriptions. Thus the last line of his post, that apparently overlooked 'point'. That there are inherent differences in the two industries that make a direct comparison more complicated than it seems initially.

    • Re:Wait... what? (Score:5, Funny)

      by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @04:59PM (#11151999) Homepage Journal
      Forget all those minor details. When you add in the fact that pirates blatantly take $4.7 bazillion-gazillion out of the wallets of the gaming companies, you see that the gaming biz by any reasonable measure is the larger of the two.

      Of course, by that logic, the music biz represents a $843 googazillion industry, based on theoretical revenue from online file sharing.

      • Re:Wait... what? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by echocharlie ( 715022 )
        Movies get pirated as well. And one could argue that the movie piracy business is bigger than the game priacy business.
        • the parent adressed that in his post.

          Also, he was not actually being serious. He was making fun of all the figures that both industries seem to somehow conjure up out of thin air.

          Seriously how do they know that they "lost $X of dollars due to piracy?" Wild are the kinds of figures that people will come up with when there is really know way to check them.

  • Valid Point, and Yet Not (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FunWithHeadlines ( 644929 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @04:52PM (#11151901) Homepage
    It's a valid point to make: the entertainment industry is larger than just the box office receipts. You can even go farther and say the entertainment dollar is spent on movie tie-ins and merchandise, theme park rides tied to movies, lots of stuff.

    At the same time, $10B is a lot of dough, no matter what you are comparing it to. The movie industry is "only" twice as big? Yeah, well, they have had over a hundred years to build that up. How long has it taken for the game industry to reach the halfway mark? At that rate, how long before it passes the $20B mark? It is impressive no matter how you look at it.

    • I agree completely.

      Personally, I always knew the statistic was only compared to the box office, not the whole movie industry, but either way... video games are BIG MONEY.

      Anyway you spin it, the game industry is huge and growing fast.
      • Anyway you spin it, the game industry is huge and growing fast.

        Yeah, like a tumor.

        The number of really good productions, whether movies or games or whatever, stays pretty constant. It's the refuse pile you have to sift through to find the good ones that's getting larger.

    • It's a valid point to make: the entertainment industry is larger than just the box office receipts.

      It's no more valid than making the point that more apples are sold than seedless oranges.

    • Re:Valid Point, and Yet Not (Score:5, Interesting)

      by arivanov ( 12034 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:18PM (#11152277) Homepage
      Excuse for being an idiot, but where do the games like Shrek 2 and movies like Tits & Guns AKA Lara Croft classify themselves?

      That is without even mentioning the Star Wars frachise which collected a tidy 6 digit sum out of X Wing, Tie Fighter, Rebellion, Tie Fighter vs X Wing, Jedi Knights and the extension packs for all of them.

      These two industries are nowdays ONE industry. Every decent movie has a lame game tucked on it and vice versa. Doom the movie... Yuck...

    • WalMart (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sxltrex ( 198448 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:42PM (#11152637)
      At the same time, $10B is a lot of dough, no matter what you are comparing it to. The movie industry is "only" twice as big? Yeah, well, they have had over a hundred years to build that up. How long has it taken for the game industry to reach the halfway mark? At that rate, how long before it passes the $20B mark? It is impressive no matter how you look at it.


      Just to put things into perspective, WalMart does about $250 billion in sales annually. That's a single company taking in 10X the annual revenue of two entire industries combined. Now that's impressive.

  • As far as I can tell from the original article, the numbers generated for video game revenue do not include rentals either.

  • Ok, fine! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @04:54PM (#11151929)
    So this article was what, 6-10 months too early?

    With the crap that coming out the theatres, I won't be long until other industries top them.

    • There are pills that claim they can help you reach your goals long before 6-10 months pass.
    • With the crap that coming out the theatres...

      I guess by that you mean that today's typical fare of violent shoot-'em-up videogames are not crap, which I guess is purely a matter of taste. I'd still rate movies as way higher on my to-do list than most video games, and both are actually way down the list from other activities.

      I'm not sure why the two industries are even being compared. So what if the gaming industry does get bigger? It's still just games. The movies will be around for a long time, espec

    • Re:Ok, fine! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ajs ( 35943 ) <{ajs} {at} {ajs.com}> on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:40PM (#11152609) Homepage Journal
      With the crap that coming out the theatres

      I would argue that the movies being released today are at least as good as the movies being released at just about any period in movie-making history. There are some stunning examples of really good movie-making right along side with mountains of utter self-involved tripe. This is as it has always been. What's a bit different now is that the industry has managed to create two reasonably self-contained development tracks. One is for the big-budget media-fests and one is for the work that is to be judged on merit, rather than number of toy tie-ins.

      We call these "studio" and "independent" films, but that distinction is a fiction. In reality there are simply two modes of marketing a film. One involves a formulaic involvement from the studio from day one, and has a much higher success rate at the box office. The other involves far more risk, but the studios offload that risk to the film-makers and "buy in" at a stage where the quality of the product has been established.

      This is done because it has worked so well in the cable television market, where some of the best shows from the fiction and non-fiction market have been created this way (pretty much all of PBS, Discovery, SciFi, etc. are done this way).

      Personally, I think this is a good thing. It gives us more of what we want on a visceral level (blood, boobs and beasts) and at the same time a natural selection process that highlights and rewards good film-makers who take risks.
  • That the video game industry is a big industry now, definitely a major player in the world of entertainment, for those who weren't aware (like me).

    It's definitely ballpark to the movie industry, which blew me away, I had no idea.

    -Jesse
  • The article mentions licensing in both the gaming and movie industries but what I also think about is the licensing as a foundation for a product: either as adaptation to a screenplay or a game itself.

    Now, how often do video games get turned into movies. A couple dozen? And how many have been good? Paul W. S. Anderson has done more to damage the flow from games to movies than anyone else. Usually its the movies based upon non-existent games that come off better (the only one I can think of is Avalon f

    • Re:Licensing (Score:3, Insightful)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 )
      The day that a crap movie comes out only to boost the sales of video game will this argument become interesting.

      Tomb Raider
      The Wizard
      Super Mario Bros
      Double Dragon
      Street Fighter
      Mortal Kombat
      Pokemon
      Final Fantasy - Spirits Within
      Wing Commander
      And coming soon to a theater near you.. Doom

      These were all bullshit movies to schill the games, or "grow the franchise" in marketdrone speak.

      There are more, many more if you want to include TV shows in the argument.

      It's all the same "industry", the money winds up al

  • ITS ALL THE FUCKING SAME INDUSTRY (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @04:55PM (#11151935) Journal
    Called entertainment.

    Take a look behind the curtain.

    Many video games are movie tie-ins.

    Many movies are video game tie-ins.

    Who chalks up the bucks for "The Incredibles" for XBox? The video game industry? The movie industry?

    What about the revenue for the Doom movie? Video game industry? Movie industry?

    What about the revenue for the endless talk tv drivel about the Doom game and movie?

    My point is, the money ends up in the same pockets, for the most part.
    • What about the revenue for the Doom movie? Video game industry? Movie industry?

      Neither? It isn't out yet.

    • Who chalks up the bucks for "The Incredibles" for XBox? The video game industry? The movie industry?

      Whoever gets to keep the money, obviously. In the case of "The Incredibles" for XBox, the developers and/or publishers will be paying a license fee (be it fixed, per unit, or percentage of sales). That money will be counted towards the movie, the rest will be counted as "video game".

      My point is, the money ends up in the same pockets, for the most part.

      So what? It's still useful to compare the size

    • I wouldn't say they end up in the same pockets for the most part.

      Consider all FPS games where Doom is an exception when the movie will be released, such as Half-Life, Halo, Counterstrike, Battlefield 1942, Far Cry, Vampire Bloodlines, ...

      Consider all RTS games -- Starcraft, the Warcraft series, the Age of Empires series, the Command & Conquer series, Heroes of Might & Magic, ...

      The MMORPG's -- EQ, WoW, DAoC, Horizons, Eve, ..

      Heck, just think of the flight simulators alone, IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgot

  • Apples and Oranges? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Deluxe_247 ( 743837 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @04:55PM (#11151936)
    This isn't a proper comparison, and it never was in my mind. If you go to a movie in a Theatre, you get to SEE the movie in its entirety, but you don't own it. On the contrary, if you want to get the full experience out of a video game, you'll either rent it until you are finished, or buy it from the store. You can't compare these 1 to 1 because you can't pay 8$ to play a game for 3 hours and be 'completely satisfied' and get closure from it. Now they want to compare Movies, VHS, and DVD sales to .. it looks like just plain Video Game Sales.. What about Video game rentals? How about all the gaming events that they have around the country? Im sure there's money being spent there.. Does this include arcade games that people plug coins into? You can't just take a look at opening sales of a movie theatre and compare it to opening sales of a video game and claim either is bigger than the other. At least, it seems flawed to me, but I've been working all day and am probably fried. Anyone have any opinions on this?
    • Just to clarify a point: You cannot own any of these items, i.e., games or movies. You are purchasing a license to view, play, or use the materials. "Own it today on DVD," is a highly misleading marketing slogan.

      At the same time, the sellers want it both ways. The physical delivery mechanism of a DVD is a product, so if it is damaged, destroyed, lost, or stolen, good luck having it replaced without paying full price for a new copy.
    • If you go to a movie in a Theatre, you get to SEE the movie in its entirety,

      Yeah thats what I thought when I went to see the 2nd Matrix movie. I was shocked to see "to be continued" on a friggin movie theatre screen. They should have picked a better endpoint where there was some closure rather than charging 2 movie tickets months apart for one movie split in half.

  • I see the quality of reporting by our 4th estate is still ever so wonderful.
  • [rant mode on] I mean the video game industry is maybe 10bn$ but quality is down the gutter. Same for film industry. I mean just look at how they transformed a good story from Asimov into a action flick. How many film made you think recently ? How many classical like "once upon the time in the west", or even "The Seventh Seal" and many other ? The game industry had become what I always hated in the last 10 years about the film industry : more and more copying and reusing the same sucessful "recept" for the
    • The I Robot movie was better than most of the non-asimov asimov books. And it did have a decent thought-inspiring point. Sure it was a point that asimov could have made in ~4 pages rather than a whole movie, but to dismiss the entirity as an action film is unfair. I haven't seen the movies you mentioned, but the science fiction movies I've watched recently have made me think more than all but the best science fiction writers. You're right about games though, wrt what I've played recently, but I think that's
    • I humbly submit that the LOTR trilogy single-handedly justifies the exitance of motion pictures in the last ten years. Throw in parts 1 & 2 of both Spiderman and Kill Bill, and you've got a darn good decade for movies on your hands there. ... and those are just the films with geek cred.

      Look past the Jerry Bruckhiemer chucks of spew, and you will find that new directors like Spike Jonze, Daren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, along with veterans at the top of their game like the Cohen broth
    • When was the last time a video game made you contemplate some deep philosophical point? The thing is with all forms of media (Music, TV, Movies, Games, Books, Graphiti) that 90%+ of them are devoid of all actual content, and serve only an escapist function.

      And when some form of media hits the right nerve, and becomes inspirational, it is quickly copied, and cliche-ed, and thus looses all content in retrospect.

      And then there is the fact that there does not seem to actually be anything new under the sun, I
  • Do these figures take into account used games and game rentals?

    Almost every game store is pushing very, very hard to sell used merchandise. They offer 'lifetime warranties' on CDs and DVDs (but not against scratching or damage!) and they purposefully steer parents to used titles, if you have been in a game store you have seen it. This income is not shared with the game publisher, or anyone else but the game store itself.

    These greedy sons of bitches now sell used games for the same price as new games, and
  • Even though the bottom line of the movie houses dont see this, there seems to be a huge buying and selling of used games. Ive seen used LOTR xbox games that I can get for a 25% then any new ones. Of course, you needs to make sure they work.
    Heck, even amazon.com encourages the buying and selling of used products.
  • I wonder how much money is spent in hardware upgrades by gamers wanting to play the latest and greatest?

    Sure, it's probably not enough to offset the difference. The point is that the gaming industry also has tie-ins to other areas.

  • but they also don't count (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Surt ( 22457 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:01PM (#11152032) Homepage Journal
    Game rentals.
    Game subscription fees.
    Game swag sales.
    International all of the above.

    Factor those back in, and the game industry comes out back on top.

    Bottom line: Games get a slightly larger share of consumer entertainment dollars than movies do. People also spend slightly more hours playing games than watching movies.
    • >Factor those back in, and the game industry comes out back on top.

      Right. And you have the data to prove this?

      Keep up the nintendo-ing- because account-ing isn't working out for you.
    • Games lose because to be fair you have to subtract the costs of the gaming consoles. They should never have been included in the first place.

      If you add console costs to the gamer total, than it's only fair to add the costs of all those DVD players and VCRs to the movie total. And let's not forget the costs to subscribe to those movie channels, e.g., HBO. And what about the costs for pay-per-view movies?! Heck, why not add the costs of building theaters to the movie total?! And don't forget the price o
    • I'm sure the US movie industry also makes a nice little chunk of change when international tickets/sales/rentals are taken into account, too.
    • International all of the above.
      They didn't count international movie receipts, why should they count international game receipts?
      Factor those back in, and the game industry comes out back on top.
      No. The game industry won't come out on top because the movie industry is bigger. It's a simple as that.

  • um, yah (Score:4, Funny)

    by Severious ( 826370 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:03PM (#11152065)
    And both are dwarfed by the porn industry. If you were to inclube porn in with movies though then well the videogame industry does not come even close. I would look up the stats on porn but I am at work and would rather not get fired today. I do recall porn being bigger than all of major league sports at the minimum.
  • How about the important question. Which entertains better dollar for dollar? Lets compare Titantic and Halo 2. 2 of the "best" in their genre.

    3 Hour film in theater: $10 (1998)
    10+ Views of 3 hour film on VHS/DVD: Another $20
    10+ Hours single player gameplay: $50
    100+ Hours Multiplayer Gameplay: Same $50

  • You bastard!!!

    Look man, we're a bunch of geeks and our lives revolve around gizmos, gadgets and games. We WANTED to think that we are actually mainstream and thereby justify our lifestyles. Now you went and made us a bunch of niche-dwelling nerds again... I hope you're satisfied.

  • It's interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jayhawk88 ( 160512 ) <jayhawk88@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:14PM (#11152227)
    ...that a lot of people associated with the games industry have this fascination with comparing themselves to the movie industry. We make just as much/more than the movie industry. We self-regulate our ratings system just like the movie industry. Our games are so incredibly cinematic in nature, they're like miniature movies! We make all kinds of games based on movies, and movies are made based off our games, we're equals!

    It's odd to me that something that for so many years was the "alternative" form of entertainment is now so obsessed with making itself just look and feel just like the movie and or television industry. The gaming industry as a whole needs to collectively take a look at itself and decide if this is what we really want. Creativity is the only limiting factor in gaming, we can't afford to lose that ingredient, or gaming as a fresh, exciting entertainment media is dead.

    You can already see this happening: What are the big games right now? Half Life 2. Halo 2. Sims 2. Gran Turismo 4. Everquest 2. Final Fantasy 11. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (essentially GTA6). Metroid Prime 2. Metal Gear Solid 3. Madden for the 15th straight year. Doom 3. Burnout 3. Prince of Persia 2. Spiderman 2. Pikmin 2. Paper Mario 2. Need for Speed Underground 2. The list goes on and on.

    The fact is, you'll be hard pressed to find a video game these days that isn't a straight sequel, the latest title in a long line, or based on a universe established in other games (World of Warcraft). People were having a cow this summer when it was all sequels, where's the outcry over this practice in video games?

    • Re:It's interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xaroth ( 67516 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:31PM (#11152478) Homepage
      There is, of course, a major difference.

      In movies, sequels suck. I mean, they suck a LOT. And before all of you start saying "Well, Star Trek [insert favorite one] was better than the original!", I have one word for you: Matrix.

      The reasons for this are many. Lower budgets, raised expectations, changes in writers, directors, creative and technical staff, trying to extend a situation that shouldn't be extended, "direct to video", etc.

      However, in video games, sequels are generally very good compared to their predecessors. Now, before you go saying "Final Fantasy [your least favorite one here] was so much worse than [your favorite one here]!", I can retort that you've just proved my point.

      The reasons for this are many, but among them are: increased budget, improved technology, gameplay can be improved in an evolutionary fashion, a generally lesser emphasis on character development (so reusing characters isn't as big of a deal, since they are largely peripheral to the process; think "Mario"), an increased focus on the producers of the games themselves, etc.

      In other words, the production of sequels for both formats is exceptionally different, and so, therefore, are their results. That's not to say there aren't exceptions on either side, but if you look hard enough at the exceptions, you'll probably find examples of techniques from the other format. (For example, changing the creative direction for Silent Hill 4 was disasterous, whereas a lack of emphasis on character development is what has allowed the Godzilla franchise to continue to exist).

      • Re:It's interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jayhawk88 ( 160512 ) <jayhawk88@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:46PM (#11152730)
        You're right of course, gaming has a much better sequel-to-suck ration than the movies. Also, some game characters/universes should never be allowed to die (Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Warcraft, etc).

        But it's almost getting to be too much of a good thing. Off the top of your head, can you even name more then 5 video games that are based on an original idea/concept, produced in the past year or so, and has either won critical acclaim or seen high sales? Without resorting to GameFAQ's I'll try and see what I can come up with:

        1. Khatma Damacy (sp I'm sure)
        2. Fable
        3. City of Heroes
        4. .......Far Cry?
        5. ...................I'd like to say Mario Tennis but that doesn't really count...Viewtiful Joe!

        Seriously, those last two took me quite a while. The point being that even if sequels are excellent on the whole, gaming needs new ideas. Look at a game like Metroid Prime. Excellent game in every aspect, technically solid, beautiful to look at, exciting and fun to play. But does it really break any new ground? You're still Samus Aran, alien bounty hunter, and you're still showing up on planets to kill beasts and crap bombs out of your butt.

        I'm not trying to say these games don't need to be made, because quite frankly I love these types of games as much as the next guy. I'm just saying we have to keep the industry fresh with new ideas, or things are going to get stale.

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @06:46PM (#11153485)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:It's interesting (Score:3, Insightful)

        by kamapuaa ( 555446 )
        In movies, sequels suck

        Generally true, and it's also generally true that video game sequals are pretty good. But that's also due to the nature of the entertainment.

        If a movie sequel is nothing but more of the same with a fancier special effects budget, the movie will be justly derided. However, perfectly sucessful video games sequels can be nothing more than a graphical update of the original. People don't like it when developers mess with the original formula too much - they're looking for an update r

    • a lot of people associated with the games industry have this fascination with comparing themselves to the movie industry.

      Very true, and it's been that way for a while.

      I remember Nintendo bragging, circa 1990, that if their Super Mario Bros. 3 game had been a movie, it would have broken E.T.'s record for revenue! Duh, no shit. Movie tickets cost $5 back then and your game cartridge retaild for $44.95.

      Apples and oranges are both fruits, but there's really no valid comparison between them. You don't eve
    • Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is the 5th PoP game, not the second. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia [wikipedia.org].

  • Sales "and Rentals"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MattW ( 97290 ) <matt@ender.com> on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:16PM (#11152253) Homepage
    It's a compelling article, although there's a huge amount of number fudging.

    (1) If you count DVD sales and rentals, aren't you double counting sales to the big rental chains? And of course, studios don't see the money from rentals any more than a game developer sees money from blockbuster renting a game, so why should that be counted?

    (2) Does the $10B figure for the game industry include game rentals? Or is it possible that perhaps the rentals of games at, say, Blockbuster, got grouped into the movie rental business, since they do so much game renting?

    (3) How does resale figure into this? There's a huge market for "pre-owned" games AND movies, including a lot of trade-in credits. Personally, I'd expect movies to be rented more but traded in less (at least as a percentage of their sales revenue).

    (4) How do you account for cross-licensed stuff? It seems silly to count the Spider-Man 2 game as a purely "video game industry" thing, as it wouldn't even exist without the movie. And when Doom comes out in theatres, how does one account for that? Clearly, the brand names generated in each industry create value and that value is hard to measure solely off sales in one genre or another.

    (5) What about subscriptions? There's obviously plenty of license money being thrown around by HBO when they get movies, and likewise, on the Video Games side, how much are all those MMO subscriptions worth?

    One could even go into an in-depth review of piracy. How does piracy in each segment compare and effect revenues? What sort of margins do big hits have, and what sort of margins does the industry overall have? And what sort of residuals? It's a lot harder to squeeze more life out of an old game than an old movie. Old movies show up on TV and such, but old games just end up getting cracked.

    And they give examples of bestsellers, but they don't look at the breadth of titles. How many video games came out vs how many movies?

    And certainly International Box Office is absolutely colossal for big movies. How does gaming compare? A lot of major Hollywood movies take in 65%+ of their gross overseas. How do localized versions of Video Games compare?

    I think what we can all agree on is that Video Games comprise an ever-increasing portion of the GDP and probably of the entertainment dollar that we spend, and as such, it's a lot harder to predict where they will go. Most video game players can imagine a *long* way into the future for video games in terms of technology, to the point where I could see people paying thousands of dollars for holodeck-type video game vacations that last a week; it's hard to see where movies go from here for sure, whereas Video Games have shown a seemingly endless appetite for more advanced technology.

    • (1) If you count DVD sales and rentals, aren't you double counting sales to the big rental chains? And of course, studios don't see the money from rentals any more than a game developer sees money from blockbuster renting a game, so why should that be counted?

      No, the sales to rental chains aren't counted in the publically reported sales figures (which are sales and rentals to consumers). Rentals should be counted because we are measuring the size of the industries, not just the money the studios bring

  • As I posted in "The Smaller Screen" [slashdot.org], in the earlier Slashdot discussion:

    What exactly is this "Hollywood" that Matthew Yi claims is smaller than the $10B "Game Industry" in TFA? Maybe it doesn't include the $14B US ($32B global) record industry: a business run out of LA, mostly, and NYC, even if it's 80% owned in Tokyo/Sony, Berlin/BMG and Paris/Vivendi-Universal. Is it just movies (not TV, either)? The actual scale of "filmed entertainment" revenue (not including music videos, part of the "recorded music
  • It shouldn't matter, but I'm surprised the Slashdot blurb doesn't mention the fact that the author of the story (ie the "Grumpy Gamer") is Ron Gilbert of Monkey Island and Total Annihilation fame. Note his peculiar About page [grumpygamer.com] written in Latin. And he's geeky, too: Firefox and BSD links, and the whole thing is CC licensed.
  • Size doesn't matter.
  • don't forget that the game industry also has similar "submarkets" too.

    There are various types of game rentals, game related hardware, game-related software (operating systems for PC's), etc.

    People are more likely to continuously buy more game-related hardware than their movie-related hardware (TV, dvd players, etc.).

    Plus the fact that the profit margins are probably better with games anyways (movies require alot more advertising and requires more initial capital while games, well...everybody and their gr

  • They miss something else (Score:4, Insightful)

    by EpsCylonB ( 307640 ) <eps&epscylonb,com> on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:26PM (#11152391) Homepage
    When they say "bigger" they usually mean makes more money but that is only half the story.

    A movie costs £5 at the box office or rental and £20 on DVD. A game costs upwards of £30, so while games may be competing with movies in the area of profits, the number of people playing games is far less than those who watch movies. Culturally videogames are still a long way behind film.

  • Secondary Markets (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mr_Blank ( 172031 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:26PM (#11152400) Journal
    Does anyone factor in cable subscriptions driven by the movies that are shown? What about blockbuster and netflix subscriptions? Does anyone count games on cell phones, pdas, or non platform handheld games ? What about after market sales of movies or games on eBay, garage sales, etc?

    Comparing two industries ain't easy. And I mostly agree with stratjakt (596332) anyhow that it is a moot point when you consider all the money ends up in the same few pockets.

  • Math (Score:2)

    by eyeball ( 17206 )
    I wonder how accurate those estimates are. For example, if a video store buys $500 worth of videos from a distributor, then rents them out for $2500, is that $3000 towards the movie industry's efforts? Are they also counting profits from non-movie related video store sales, such as soda and candy?

    And for the video game side, do they count arcades and PC game places in malls?

  • My Comments (Score:3, Informative)

    by tekunokurato ( 531385 ) <jackphelps@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:35PM (#11152531) Homepage
    People can check out my supplemental arguments to the idiotic article posted the other day here:
    http://www.jackphelps.net/archives/2004/12/ worst_a rticle_e.shtml

    or here:
    Games are bigger than movies

    Matthew Yi doesn't say what he's comparing the $10b figure to. My guess is that it's the oft-quoted ~$9.6b domestic box offices revenue figure. Both figures are domestic, but he is leaving out the important $21b home video market and the aftermarket licensing market (pay-per-view, public performance, etc.). I don't know the exact size of the latter, but according to ABN Amro in 2000 it was roughly 28% of the total dollars (probably about $8b domestic then, but my guess is that it's dropped off some). Hollywood produces a lot of porn, too. You want to throw that $8b in there, Yi?

    How do you play your games and movies?

    The $10b figure includes hardware. Consoles. Do I need to say that again? The $21b domestic video market requires dedicated players, too, and Yi ignored those in his analysis. Probably the most relevent statistic Yi could have used for the domestic games market, then, is the ~$7.15b 2003 North American games software sales stat from Push Research.

    What the hell is Hollywood?

    Okay, I understand that the guy is talking about movies, but he never even says that. He says "Hollywood" again and again. Even if he were using the abovementioned $9.6b gross domestic box office reciepts figure, he's wrong to call it "hollywood," because that figure includes a number of movies (albeit small) not produced at all by Hollywood, and does not include Hollywood's exported box office reciepts. That's akin to some sick hybrid between GDP and GNP where you count only good produced in the US and by US companies, and it tells you nothing and reeks of stupid journalist.

    The month of November

    Yi cites November as a killer month he considers demonstrative of the growth in games, and my personal opinion is that this is equally rotten analysis. November included the release of Halo 2, Metroid Prime 2, Halflife 2, a peripheral sales boom from the October 26th GTA: San Andreas release, and probably the 200,000 Nintendo DS units sold in the first week of release. What that means is that there has never been a month in gaming equivalent to that month, and there probably won't be in all of 2005 unless you count console releases, which again are hardly a relevent comparison.

  • Where does Grumpy Gamer get his numbers?? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by badmammajamma ( 171260 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @05:45PM (#11152708)
    "The 2004 domestic Video and Computer Game Industry is estimated to be around $10B. This is a slightly misleading figure because it includes the sales of the console machines, in addition to the sales of the software, but we'll go with it."

    First he states, that it's BS because it includes console gaming. Ok, a stretch but I'll let it go.

    "The domestic US box office is estimated to be around $9B for 2004, and this is where the myth starts to take life. The problem is the movie industry is a lot bigger then just the U.S. box office. DVD sales and rentals for 2003 topped $16B. VHS sales and rentals for 2003 was $6.4B. VHS sales are declining fast, but most of that will just shift over to DVDs, which brings the grand total for non-box office movie sales to over $20B, twice the figure for the entire game industry."

    Now he says, that the movie biz is worth 20 billion if you take in to account international sales, dvd sales, etc. He says it's important to take into account intertantional sales but then he fails to take into account internation sales of video games. What is that number? Last I heard, it was close to 30 BILLION. (I'll try and dig up an official number later.)

    Anyway, he then compares international gross of various movies with NATIONAL gross of video games. Yeah, that's fair. Halo 2 he says made $160 million. Hmm...that's strange, according to my research it made $125 million its FIRST DAY of release in North America alone. I suppose it's possible it only made another $35 million (which is only 700,000 copies) world wide past the first day but I'm doubtful. He says GTA: San Andreas grossed $178 million. I can find several internet sources with one google search that will tell you it made that much OPENING WEEKEND. That's not the total amount it will make.

    Then Grumpy Gamer wonders where are all the limosines and fast cars that the gaming companies have. I guess since there's no giant premier on E showing these people coming out of limosines or exotic cars, they must not exist.

    You can go on and on with this, but if this guy is going to try and debunk a "myth" (that only geeks know about anyway), at least try and be accurate instead of creating your own myth. This guy is completely talking out of his ass as far as I can tell. He has no hard evidence to prove anything. Apparently, Grumpy Gamer believes you destroy myths by mere speculation, lack of hard evidence, and incorrect figures. (Notice he didn't provide any sources for where his game gross' came from.)
  • Why is he counting sales and rentals of movies? Does the auto industry count sales and rentals in their figures? I think just sales would be a better measure of the industry. Afterall, aren't the folks who buy the movies (or cars) and then rent them out a seperate industry from the ones who produce what they are renting?
  • "DVD sales and rentals for 2003 topped $16B."

    I call "bullshit" on this one. Everybody knows that P2P has killed off the DVD industry!
  • The $10 billion doesn't include hardware and accesories. So, the games industry still isn't as big as Hollywood all around when you add in everything, but let's compare apples to apples.

  • The Shift IS Significant (Score:3, Insightful)

    by geomon ( 78680 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @06:30PM (#11153321) Homepage Journal
    If you are looking at the data that indicates a progressive decline in "in-theater movie experiences." American's, at least, fail to express an increasing desire to attend a movie in the theater. You now pay ~$100US for a family of four to have a night on the town including a movie.

    At one time, that demographic was the bread-and-butter of the local movie house. Now a large segment of the US population is staying home with their high-quality audio and television units, rather than drive to town (fuel), grab an early dinner (fast food), drive to the cineplex (fuel), pay for your tickets (ouch!), buy a few snacks (sock!) and a drink (pow!), and you have probably spent the entire months entertainment budget.

    The movie industry will decline for a short time and will eventually mimic the game industry's business model. They will still put out occasional theatrical releases of big-budget shows, but the "B" movies will probably never be shown in local screens.

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