I was just going off what I had read a few years back about gaming vs. movies. If you have contrary data, feel free to post it. I'm not above admitting I'm wrong about something.

Now that I have that out of the way, you're a giant douche. Cheers.

Sorry no.

Here's an interesting article on the subject:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070830-gaming-to-surge-50-percent-in-four-years-possibly.html

It appears that most reports that claim games are bigger than movies only use box office sales, not DVD sales.

You want numbers, here are the numbers from a recent presentation of mine (scroll down to the sales chart):

http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/Videogame2006.html

These are based on data from MPAA, NPD and Variety, plus press reports of national sales in major markets. They're not perfect, i.e. could be off +5%/-5%. But there's no doubt game sales have zoomed past box office revenues worldwide, and will soon eclipse DVD sales/rentals. Note the regional differences - games are way ahead of cinema and DVDs in East Asia, and Europe buys fewer DVDs than the US.

To keep this in perspective, the biggest media industry of them all was, is, and will continue to be advertising, which I think rakes in close to $400 billion worldwide per year (I'll have to double-check that).

the asian market may buy fewer legal dvds, whem i was in china i remeber buying 6 dvds for the equivlent of 1 dollar, videogames till went close to thier real cost out side of cartradge based copies which must be easier to copy..
another consideration, is that both movies and video game are heavly regulated, china did not legaly get ps2 till 2005. I have a few friends there and ocasionaly i will drift into gaming while talking to them, and most of them have no idea what im talking about. However for movies, at least ones that make it there they see them before i do.

also are you sure in your break down of monies earned by they movie industry you have left out monies made by tv shows and other non movie related things studios run

One last time - the movie industry is far larger than box-office receipts alone.

The games industry is nowhere near as large as movie industry.

This weeks box office only top 10 : 61.89 million. (US only)

Divided by $50 for avg video game cost = 1,237,800 games sold this week. Keep in mind the avg cost of video game is less then $50 with DS/PSP/Greatest hits games.

Video Game 2005 Revenue : 32.6 billion

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8205


Motion Picture Revenue 2005 : 42.9 billion

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ic5575a8c4f61aadd68a0d344f476d5da

slorgnet's link is some well compiled charts and lists it as

Games : 30.7 billion
Movies : 57.6 billion

games might pass it soon as its growing faster, but right now movies generate between 1.4-1.8 times what games do.

so yeah Rocketpig - you are WRONG. thanks for the insult tho.

You're welcome. 

Actually, games really are a larger industry than film, though not by much. The reason is that DVD sales and rentals includes TV shows and programming of all kinds. Also, my charts don't include certain forms of non-recorded TV revenues, such as syndication rights and network revenues. Add those in, and TV is still king of the hill and growing pretty fast (especially in places like India and China). Games are number 2, and growing even faster than TV, while cinema is number three and growing pretty slowly.

What's truly shocking is that the mainstream business press has no idea of just how big and important the game industry has become. Newsweek's Ngai Croal is an honorable exception, but the coverage out there tends to be awful.

 He might be wrong but theres no need to act like a dick about it =