As reported all over the place, but probably best at our friends at Gamasutra, U.S. Game Sales Jump 25% In June. Hardware was up quite a bit and software alone was up 15%. Xbox 360 hardware sales still lag sales of PS2 which just goes to show how price sensitive US consumers are. My guess is this bodes well for Wii and horribly for the outrageously priced ( yet I am still going to get one ) PS3.

In a related note to the widely predicted Wii preeminence, EA fully commits to supporting the Nintendo Wii platform reports Reuters. Shares of EA rise on the news. It appears the market expects the Wii to be a major platform.

At last tally the worldwide video game market was $30 billion. Compared to Music at $40 billion and movies at $90 billion, games are a ways off. The big difference is the growth numbers. Music sales have declined worldwide from $60 billion six years ago to $40 billion last year. Movies are relatively flat. The video game market grows at 4-6% in an off year and 17-20% in a good one. At this rate games will easily surpass movies and everything else for that matter in a relatively short period of time.

Music sales have flopped because of the downloading industry. People do not need to buy a CD legally for 15 bucks, they can just get one song off of the internet. The movie industry I would expect to be also flat, since recently there have been very few "masterpeices". Pirates of the Caribean that came out recently was pretty much the only good movie that blew people out of the water (no pun intended) this year. I mean look at the DaVinci Code. One of the most popular books in the world, a good director, a stellar cast, and it gets mediocre reviews. These days masterpieces are still few and far between, and its showing on the industry.

I'd like to know what do you consider a "masterpiece". To me, Hollywood blockbusters such as these are in the 99.95% of cases pure crap to lure mindless sheep in. Fun crap in some cases (i.e: "Pirates"), but crap nonetheless.


Edit: I just came home from the movies, went to see the second Pirates of the Caribbean, and while I'm still not sure I'd call it a "masterpiece", I do have to state that it's probably the most unbelievably, out-and-out entertaining movie I've seen since Return of the Jedi, back in 1984. So there's that.





My explanation for this phenomenon goes something like this: The story in the book was already a boring, soulless, predictable, square uninspired piece of shit; and there was no way a movie would move such garbage any up.

OK, maybe a tiny, little, itty-bitty little, if they casted Johnny Depp as Langdon. But that's mainly because I'm so gay about him.

I suspect the multi-billion gaming industry refers to console games. I doubt non-mulitiplayer offline PC games contribute squat in this area.