Games Sales Beat DVDs in US Market
For anyone who still believes that video games are this marginal, tiny off-shoot of the entertainment industry, populated by a small segment of basement-dwelling cave boys….wake up!
The annual report from the Entertainment Merchants Association had a look at entertainment across platforms and had some interesting things of note with regards to the relative sizes of the film and gaming industries. US retail gaming, according to 2007 year-end numbers tabulated by the NPD Group, raked in $18.85 billion over the year in combined software, hardware, and accessories. This is practically double the amount of money taken at the box office in 2007, which tallied $9.6 billion. The gaming industry as a whole managed to outsell DVD software as well, which came in around the $16 billion mark.
A couple of caveats , since all stats need to be taken with a grain of salt:
- the film industry numbers do not include purchases of DVD hardware and accessories (ie. DVD players, home video equipment); film is likely underestimated
- the gaming numbers do not appear to include digital downloads, microtransactions and other “new retail” opportunities; the gaming numbers may be underestimated
Via | GameSpot.com
Image courtesy of Hobby Media Srl
