Quick link: Movie versus video game

Interesting that there's a full article on CNN that a video game might substantially impact the opening day launch of a movie: 'GTA IV' could keep 'Iron Man' audience at home - CNN.com.

Would you have entertained this as a problem years ago?

The aggregate industry numbers prove it out - in 2007, the movie box office is $9.6B and games is $9.5B. It's neck and neck!

UPDATE: A couple readers have pointed out that the movie numbers obviously don't include DVDs, licensing, and lots of other revenue streams - it's still an amazing comparison, but doesn't fully capture movies versus games

Comments

[David Kaye]

Much as I would like to take this data as a sign of the inexorable rise to cultural domination of the games industry, comparing box office take to game sales figures is not a a like for like comparison. A fairer measure would include DVD sales, which puts the movie business back into first place.

[Joe Ludwig]

You also have to include licensing movies overseas, to hotels, to pay per view, to premium cable, to basic cable/broadcast, etc. And for some movies (including Iron Man) there are all the merchandising deals too.

Games pretty much have JUST the game sales themselves plus some rental money that doesn't go to the game's publisher at all.

[Gordon Bowman]

First time reader here. Very interesting stuff, definitely becoming a subscriber.

Iron Man obviously did very well in the box office this weekend. Posted $101 mill for the weekend. http://www.imdb.com/chart/ .

But it definitely makes me wonder how much more it could have killed it on opening weekend with no GTA IV in the picture. Certainly there is a big overlap in audience.