Is the Video Game Industry bigger than the Movie Industry?

[SlorgNet]

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).