- Book Industry: Steve Jobs' only authorized biography, Steve Jobs, launched to a very successful first week of sales: 379,000 copies sold. Grossing $13.2 million in its first week could pit Steve Jobs as the #1 seller of all 2011 books.
- Film Industry: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn-Part 1 remains #1 at the box office after its second week in theaters. As of Nov. 28, the film grossed $228 million domestically.
- Video Game Industry: Battlefield 3--a first-person war shooter from publisher Electronic Arts--sold 5 million copies in its first week, earning $300 million in sales. Not too shabby? Consider its rival, Activision's Modern Warfare 3. It sold 6.5 million copies…in its first day. According to IGN Entertainment, $400 million in 24 hours makes MW3 the "most successful entertainment launch of anything, ever."
There's a pattern here: Video games are taking over. And here's why: Gaming is the only form of entertainment that allows for full character immersion and interaction on the part of the user, and that's how generations determine value in a product today. It's the reason why gaming will continue to grow while other more passive forms of entertainment, like books and movies, will slowly phase themselves out.
Consumerism, like industry itself, is quickly moving into the digital age, or what you might more accurately refer to as the age of instant gratification. That is to say consumers' level of patience and concentration is slimming, because information is processed at such a rapid pace these days that they feel they should be rewarded for their efforts just as quickly. The quicker a product can accommodate their need for reward, the more financial support it will garner from consumer markets. Video games are highly accommodating of this need for fast reward--nearly every minute, users discover something new or are awarded virtual achievements for their efforts--but books and films, while also deeply engrossing, require much less active participation on the part of the user, and the final reward--simply finishing the story--is quickly becoming inadequate for today's digitized consumers.
Entertainment is thus priced accordingly: You get more for your money the higher prices get. Movies (avg. ticket price=$7.96) only hold attention for a couple of hours at a time; books (avg. hardcover=$26) generally keep readers in tune until the last page, which may last several hours, days, weeks, depending on how fast you read; but video games ($60 new, under $40 used) can support play-throughs well over 100 hours (case in point: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim). On top of that, publishers intentionally incorporate replay value (e.g., new difficulties, achievements or multiplayer) to keep gamers coming back to a title, which inevitably builds brand loyalty for game publishers as well.
Video games have only been around for about 40 years, yet within that relatively short period they've morphed from 8-bit table tennis and jumping plumbers to full-body motion control, voice activated systems, and three-dimensional game play. The last 10-15 years, when technology really began developing, have allowed the gaming industry to become a contender with the other entertainment markets. Video games were merely waiting for the rest of the world to catch up, or for people to demand access to faster forms of entertainment.
Now, the latter two industries are turning on themselves, rather than embracing technology. Digital and self publishing is sending traditional book publishers into a tizzy, and the Internet has made watching free pirated movies a simple alternative to high-priced theaters. Video games, it seems, now have their shot. From now on, you will likely see an increase in gaming sales, while films and books gradually decline, especially books. Year-end numbers are already showing gaming's move to the front of the pack.
2010 domestic, gross industry earnings:
- Film box office=$10.1 billion
- Books=$27.9 billion
- Video game retail software=$29.8 billion (The global games market commanded $62.7 billion, and is expected to increase to $72.1 billion by 2015.)
These numbers will continue to change, particularly when inexpensive digital book publishing phases out traditional (physical) publishers. The result will have the book industry producing far fewer titles per year, which by sheer volume is essentially why that industry remains near the top of entertainment sales. We'll see if this prediction pans out as more generations are born into increasingly digitized lifestyles.
--Chris
Interesting. I would be inclined to know what the global market looks like when it comes to books and movies as well. This article also has me wondering about the money-making potential over the entire "shelf-life" (if you will) of the product. For instance, with movies, the money they bring in doesn't end at the box office. They have another big income opportunity when they are released to DVD, Blue-Ray, etc. How do video games compete in that arena? Overall I think this was a very eye-opening article. Nice job:)
Thanks! That's certainly interesting to think about; however, it would be very difficult to generate such statistics, because while all three markets are generally compared under "entertainment," they're quite different in terms of "shelf life." Films, for instance, are unique in that they have two lives: in theaters and in retail. For this market, there comes a time when movie distributors simply stop tracking sales figures. Take Twilight Saga: New Moon for example: it was only tracked in theaters for 133 days--where it earned $296.6 million--but in its final days when it was only shown in a handful of theaters it was already released to DVD and Bluray, which are then shortly tracked for an entirely different set of sales figures. Books and video games, on the other hand, are released directly to retail, and if this were the same for movies it would likely be one of those crappy Cuba Gooding Jr. flicks--Harold, anyone? The point is, these mediums are not tracked forever; it's their initial impact on the consumer market that is most telling. And while movies essentially get two whacks at the market, they're still unable to surpass books and video games sales. This could be due to the fact that, as described in the blog, movies are the most passive form of entertainment out of the three and books and video games require more active participation on the part of the user, which in turn generates more sales.
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