quote: www.kikizo.com

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Games Outgross Movies in US

Videogames best all that Hollywood has to offer.

It is often said that videogames make more money these days than Hollywood, but how accurate is that? The film and videogames number crunchers in the US have done their homework and the results are in for 2004.

In 2004, US cinema ticket sales rose slightly more than 1% to $9.4 billion. The interesting bit is that fewer people went to the movies last year and the slight increase over 2003 was due to a rise in movie ticket prices.

But what about games? According to US trade body NPD Group, videogames brought in $9.9 billion in 2004, which is a decline of less than 1% from 2003.

The videogame industry works in defined cycles that depend on new hardware and currently all three home consoles are approaching the end of their lifecycles. This has two effects: hardware sales either decline or remain flat as the market becomes saturated; and software sales go up, thanks to more people owning consoles than before.

There was new hardware in 2004, though. The twin-screened Nintendo DS was released late in the year and this helped portable video gaming cross the $1 billion barrier for the first time.

But the real winners in 2004 were the PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Halo franchise. Six of the 10 best-selling games for 2004 (see below) were released for Sony's console, with PlayStation 2-exclusive Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas coming out tops with 5.1 million copies sold.

Perhaps more surprising - given that fewer Xboxes have been sold than PlayStation 2s - is that Halo 2 was the second-best-selling game of the year, as more than four million people picked up the title.

What's more, the success of Halo 2 sparked so much interest in the series that the original Halo: Combat Evolved, which was released alongside the Xbox in 2001, was the ninth-best-selling game of 2004 in the US.

But where do videogames go from here? Even though Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will all reveal their next-generation machines during 2005, it's unlikely that all three consoles will be released this year. Of the three, Microsoft has been most vocal about releasing the Xbox successor in 2005.

Portable gaming will also benefit from more games being released for the Nintendo DS and the debut of Sony's new portable wunderkind, the PSP. But for Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube the biggest games may well lie in the past.

Here are the top 10 best-selling console games in the US for 2004:

1. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2) - 5.1 million
2. Halo 2 (Xbox) - 4.2 million
3. Madden NFL 2005 (PlayStation 2) - 3.2 million
4. ESPN NFL 2K5 (PlayStation 2) - 1.5 million
5. Need For Speed Underground 2 (PS 2) - 1.4 million
6. Pokémon FireRed (GBA) - 1.2 million
7. NBA Live 2005 (PlayStation 2) - 1.2 million
8. Spider-Man 2 (PlayStation 2) - 1.1 million
9. Halo: Combat Evolved (Xbox) - 1.1 million
10. ESPN NFL 2K5 (Xbox) - 1.0 million

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quote: James Faber

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I think video games are becoming more and more like movies every month.

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I think theatrical movies are becoming more like video games.
 

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Posted by Allison Parsons (Member # 2728) on 01-20-2005, 10:20 AM:
 
Well, I'm admitting that video games out grossing films is partly my fault.

I didn't have to pay for one movie last year, but bought 4 video games. So, blame it on me if you have too.
 

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Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 01-20-2005, 10:54 AM:
 
Sports-based videogames are the most pointless and oxymoronic genre next to "reality-TV." Yay! I can make the football player run! I'm gonna be a FOOTBALL STAR!! Basically, games for people with no imagination or skill other than to run around a field (screen).

And they come out with a new one every year so if you got MADDEN 99 and someone's got REDDIFER 2k5, then that person is cooler than you and you need to find new friends or buy a newer sports game.

=TMP=
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 01-20-2005, 12:29 PM:
 
I think we'll see this "movies more like games, games more like movies" trend continue. Patrick Macias noted this trend in his essay on film, published as a chapter in Japan Edge (1999):

quote:

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The growing trend in all media is movement away from narratives and towards situations. Maybe that's why video games, computers, television, manga, and karaoke have stolen the audience. Movies just aren't the great escape they used to be. Especially in places where the economy is down and ticket prices are up.

So give the people what they want--something without a set up, conflict, and resolution. Give them demons interactive.

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As for me, I never got into games other than the flight and ATC simulators of my aviation career. For entertainment, I still prefer my music and movies.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-20-2005, 02:18 PM:
 
I don't play videogames nearly as much as I did in the past. It's worth noting all of those games in that top ten sales list are console games (X-Box, PS2, Gamecube). To this point I've resisted the urge to buy an X-Box out of fear of how much time I might waste using it.

These days you have to spend a fortune for a high end PC if you want to play games like Doom 3 or Far Cry with good frame rates or have any kind of competitive edge in online gaming. You're going to be out $2500 to $4000 for a pretty good system. If you want top of the line hardware you'll shell out upwards of $7000 for something like an Alienware ALX box with two GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB cards in SLI configuration. Geez, that's more expensive than a good number of 3D animation workstations with nVidia Quadro or Wildcat boards.

I'm definitely buying new computer hardware sometime soon, but not for playing video games. A new notebook PC is the first priority. That's followed by getting the Adobe Studio Creative Suite 2 upgrade. Then I need to update my home desktop CPU. I'm also considering the purchase of a Mac-based system along with an Adobe CS license for that. Video games are waaaay down on my list of priorities. Purchases that can actually help me make money come first.
 

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Posted by William Leland III (Member # 1400) on 01-20-2005, 05:40 PM:
 
Im surprised that ESPN 2K5 only sold a 1 million copies. i thought with it selling for only $20 it would out sell madden 2 to 1. damn madden band wagoners.
 

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