I've heard different things. I tried searching the web (perfunctorily), but I just got a bunch of old websites. I  Figured that since many people here are good with statistics that someone might know.

I'm currently under the impression that the game industry is indeed larger, because of the general trend of growth and, as a specific example, Halo's latest showing.  Also, this year's holiday lineup is arguably the largest ever, and is bound to rake in the cash.

What do you think? Does anyone have comparison statistics, like gross profits and whatnot?

I'm new btw. Formerly a lurker. (sorry if this is in the wrong forum)

I mean their is NYC and Hollywood, and Bollywood, actual geographic areas that specialize in movies. Games? A few studios, but they aren't as big as movie studios. I don't think that games are nearly as big as movies but the good news is that they are getting a lot more attention lately

Spiderman 3 made over 900 million dollars.

So did Pirates.

So did Harry Potter.

Shrek the Third made almost 800 million dollars.

The Bourne Ultimatum made nearly 400 million dollars.

Rush Hour 3 has grossed over 200 million dollars worldwide.

Where am I going with this?

This summer has had so many huge films, I'd say Hollywood is bigger at the moment. Generally, games are bigger though.

Or, at least, that's what most gamers would try to convince you. Videogames really don't have the kind of mainstream appeal that movies do. Hell, even soccer moms would see Spiderman 3, but buying Halo 3 and a 360 is reserved strictly for their kids.

Welcome to VGC. Glad to see you post.

To answer the question, no, the movie industry is still very much bigger.

Now, I'm going to throw some numbers out that will show you why. They aren't concrete numbers, but you'll get the gist.

In the opening day, Halo 3 pulled in 170 million dollars. Ridiculous!

The average price paid for Halo 3 was about 70 bucks, leading us to believe about 2.4 million people bought it in the first 24 hours.

Spiderman 3's opening day brought in 60 million dollars. Even if you take the high ticket price average of 10 dollars per ticket, that's 6 million people that went to see it on opening day.

Halo and Spiderman are some of the biggest juggernauts of the game and film industry, which is why I chose them. Indeed, the game industry is growing, but the movie industry is still bigger, is followed more closely (they have daily revenue sales posted at many websites), and there are more festivals and such for films for both big movies and art house movies.

Perhaps with the XBLA, PSN, and WiiWare/VC, the game industry can grow much bigger with smaller projects similar to smaller movies.

Welcome. and I have no facts to base my ideas on, but I would say no.

$ wise it may come close to what the movie industry makes, but you have to remember that a movie ticket is what $8-10 and the game is $30-60. Thats a big difference. It takes a lot less games to sell to match or beat a movie's gross. Hell, even buying a movie is only like $15, easily half to 1/3 the price of the game.

When people say the video game industry is bigger than the movie industry they're comparing all of video game sales just to boxoffice revenue. If you add DVD sales, pay per view, television revenue and so on, the movie industry is still much bigger than the video game industry.

It's not even close. Thr Big Six studios in America regularly bring in over $40 billion in revenue annually. They aren't even the entire American fil industry, which is itself only about a third half of the global industry, which probably brings in close to $200 $100 billion.

In contrast, videogames pull in roughly $30-40 billion.

No.  Welcome though.

Thanks all for setting me straight. Let this be a lesson to all that being lazy leads to incorrect ideas based of heresay information and can only lead to woe. Woe I say.

Over the last 10 years the movie industry has been declining, while the video game insudtry had been growing. Guess people like interactive video (hence video games) over normal videos...