Nice thread title, and I totally agree with you. The gaming industry keeps growing and growing.

The best thing, for long time gamers that is, as more expansion occurs the higher production value can get and the cheaper games can get. If there is more of a userbase then more cost efficient things can be released. It's why DVDs are so low in price yet have higher production values than games. Can you imagine buying a game like Halo 4 for $30. It's possible if the market keeps expanding. Apart of that expansion will be becoming more cost-efficient because its the only way to do it which means cheaper games.

As much as I like your idea of expanding the market so immensely, you'll have to take it in another relation too.

First, you can't compare cost and time needed of video games and home videos.
Here in Switzerland, as in Germany too I think, games cost about five times more than DVD's. Also, watching a DVD needs you to invest about two hours, while playing a game takes you more like ten hours.
Both of this factors lead to a lower attach rate. If there would be the same amount of gaming consoles as there are DVD players, software sales still couldn't compare against DVD sales.

Also, the music industry which is definitely big too despite struggling against illegal downloads etc. is apparently comparably small to the home video industry, since, if I remember correctly, Michael Jacksons Thriller is the best selling album ever with sales of about 40 million worldwide. I have no source for this though, so maybe I'm mistaken, but I know for sure that selling a million copies of an album worldwide is definitely considered a success.

So in general, I completely agree with you, but we should not overestimate the potential volume.

Yes but we shouldn't under estimate it.  Traditionally games needed like 10 hours.  Games like Wii Sports, Nintendogs, and even Halo ask you to play in intervals of as little as 5 mins to an hour at a time.  Not every game asks you to play continuously for an experience that is only complete after 30 hrs.  Those are our hardcore games, btw.  That's why the game industry is expanding because it's becoming more mainstream in the aspect that it's allowing people to get into it at their own pace.  NOt simply saying here's an RPG or Zelda and have fun.  People wonder why games like Wii Play, Nintendogs, and as I said even Halo sell so much.  It's because it has that ability be a pick up and play title. 

And yes cost is a problem, which I mentioned, but its something that is solved with expansion.  As the userbase grows prices go down to appeal to that userbase more.  Production values can also get higher.  Less risk due to userbase size always allows more risk with pricing and production. 

And as for the music industry it's still a lot larger than the game industry but I think Thriller came close to 80 million copies actually.  Once again no source.

 I was just giving you a hard time : ).

(it was a Play on the Dark Knight)

You're right about pick up and play being an important reason of the growing industry and stuff, but also a lot of five minutes end up being ten hours finally, and if people are happy with their game, they won't need another one because one game (or a couple of games) can satisfy them for a long while. Of course one can say that films are usually watched more than once too and might end up adding to ten hours, but I still believe that the software tie ratio has no chance to ever match the movie tie ratio since you're just more involved with games than with movies.

You made a good point about prices though, that will be an interesting thing to follow.

And for the part about the music industry, that's possible. To have better numbers, I just read today in a newspaper that Coldplay sold a total of about 30 million albums, which averages to about 7.5 million copies sold per album since they released four up until now. Coldplay is quite big currently, so we can say that big gaming franchises are already selling a comparable amount to big music acts. Of course, the music industry is much much broader than the gaming industry is.

You would need a consortium controlling a gaming brand to have a 1-console future, just like there is 1 DVD system and 1 Blu-ray system with countless of different manufacturers going off with various brands and little ideas or gimmicks to distinguish their works. If there was the IESA, say, the International Entertainment Software Association that would set generational standards (minimum requirements), and there would have to be an elimination of the licensing process, too, which could be bad.

Although you raise a good, and very valid point, I think the gaming industry is just as big.

I mean look at the amount of advertising put into the dark knight? it was easily the biggest movie of 2008, and probably the biggest since the Titanic (1997). So no surprise it sold this well.

And look at the number of games that are million sellers. I don't have the number off hand but there are many. I think games are almost as big as movies