your mother said:
Well, looking at the growth of the industry, about five years ago videogames were roughly 1/2 the size of Hollywood; today, it's roughly double the size of Hollywood (in terms of overall revenue). At some time or another, the big guns like EA will probably continue to develop games with ever-escalating budgets but there will definitely be a niche market for indie developers, much like how movies are made today. So yes, I do see not only this happening, I also see an impending seismic shift towards how games are developed, published, distributed and played. I can also see unions, wage scales, cross-market tie-ins, mergers, and certainly videogame ubiquity. By the time my son is 18, everyone will have and play videogames in one manner or another. Industries undergo paradigm shifts at some time or another. Videogames will be no different IMO. This should be great news for gamers! |
Well, this is only somewhat true ...
Total revenue from the videogame industry is greater than the box office but DVD sales, Pay per view and Television licencing make up for nearly 2/3 of the Movie industry's revinue; meaning the movie industry is several times as large. At the same time the movie industry does not include revenue generated from DVD players in their calculations whereas the videogame industry does include sales of (expensive) game consoles which means that the game industry is even smaller than advertized.
One thing people are missing is one of the results that will come from the Wii ...
The success of the Wii will be a demonstration that gameplay is far more important than graphics and i(f Nintendo decides to go with a console that is 10 times as powerful as the PS3 in the next generation) developers will not feel forced to produce expensive, graphically impressive, games. A smaller developer will have the option of sticking with graphical technologies similar to what the Wii can currently do at a somewhat higher detail, whereas large developers can push the boundries of photo-realistic (and non-photorealistic) graphics; there will be a greater emphasis on it being the developer's choice.
