Games Officially King of the Entertainment Sales Hill

Scott Bullock

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Games Officially King of the Entertainment Sales Hill

Statistics show that in 2010, videogames sold more units than movies or music, becoming the best selling form of media out there.

Numbers coming in from the Entertainment Retailers Association show that gaming, though it has long brought in more money than other forms of entertainment media due to the higher price of games, has finally taken its place on top of the heap, moving more units than either music or movies.

The single best selling title from any form of media in 2010 was (no surprise here) Call of Duty: Black Ops with 3.27 million units sold, beating out Avatar's 3 million for the number 1 spot. Coming in behind these two entertainment behemoths was FIFA 11 with 2.39 units sold, making two of the top three entertainment titles video games.

"We've long been used to the idea that in value terms the videogames industry is bigger than film or music. But it is a significant moment when a game outsells all over forms of entertainment," said the ERA's spokesman, Steve Redmond. Game sales, while the most impressive of any form of entertainment media, still took a 12 percent hit from 2009, implying that while the big name titles and studios are selling more and more, the mid-to-low budget games are selling significantly less.

Of course, that might look different if mobile app sales, which were not factored into the ERA's numbers, had been included. Angry Birds alone sold 12 million units, which would obviously make it the single most purchased form of entertainment media, had it been counted in the statistics.

So if you happen to know any nay-sayers who insist gaming is only for kids and overgrown manchildren and is just a fringe industry, you now have numbers to point to whilst partaking in an a hefty helping of mockery and derision. It's only fair.

Source: Telegraph [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/8421458/Video-games-sell-more-than-DVDs-and-albums.html]

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Eri

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Feb 21, 2009
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What's so great about Jeopardy now, huh? Suck it Trebek!
 

Armored Prayer

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Ha! Proof that gaming is way more popular than what some people think.

Also good to see CoD at the top.
 

Buizel91

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Aug 25, 2008
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"Games Officially King of the Entertainment Sales Hill"

Something is not right here?

April fool? :L
 

Korten12

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Aug 26, 2009
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Armored Prayer said:
Ha! Proof that gaming is way more popular than what some people think.

Also good to see CoD at the top.
I like COD, but was that sarcastic?
 

Armored Prayer

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Korten12 said:
Armored Prayer said:
Ha! Proof that gaming is way more popular than what some people think.

Also good to see CoD at the top.
I like COD, but was that sarcastic?
Nope. I'm just very glad its the #1 from of media.(though not really surprising)
 

maantren

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Well, compare apples with apples: 3 million purchases/players/whatever is nowhere near the viewership of a top-rated TV show. Also, movies have an extremely long viewership chain that goes from first screen releases all the way to backlist cable distribution + things like netflix. And even Angry Birds, let alone Black Ops, has nothing on Farmville in terms of players.

I appreciate the ongoing desire to pretend that box retail videogames reach more people than other media, but despite the high revenue, it just isn't true.

Cheers

Colin
 

Wildflowers

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I would like to point out that we are comparing 'moved units'.
Define 'moved units to me' so we can have a real discussion.

Avatar had X box office tickets. How many blu-ray discs then? And how many DVDs? (lets ignore anything other than straight up movie sales). CoD had one sales point, not two. I am pretty sure Avatar had more combined sales units than just 3 mill.
 

sylekage

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Bout time, that's actually really good to hear. Maybe people will start respecting games
 

undeadmouse

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I think the title is a little misleading... it should read "Game officially king..." not "Games" with an "s". and it also needs the modifier "in the UK" since Black Ops "moved 5.6 million copies on day one" combined for US and UK (according to an earlier post on this site) which means that the figure of 3.27 million used in the article above can't include the US. Also, the units that are being compared are DVD units, music albums and video games. That means that movie ticket sales aren't being included which means that games are only the top of the second round of sales for movies (the first being theater releases)...

If anything this is horrible news for video games... sales for video games actually dropped last year by 12% which means that not only are people buying fewer games total but they are also buying fewer types of titles... All this means is that we can kiss goodbye to "risky" original IPs and say hello to 6 more call of duties, and twenty or so more COD clones.
 

Delusibeta

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Mar 7, 2010
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undeadmouse said:
If anything this is horrible news for video games... sales for video games actually dropped last year by 12% which means that not only are people buying fewer games total but they are also buying fewer types of titles... All this means is that we can kiss goodbye to "risky" original IPs and say hello to 6 more call of duties, and twenty or so more COD clones.
On consoles in the UK, maybe. PC Gaming in general was up by a good 12%-ish last year (or was it 20%? I forget). Of course, the UK is among the least PC-gaming-centric countries in Europe, so I wouldn't be too surprised if there was an drop in sales in that front in the UK.
 

Zer_

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Feb 7, 2008
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Scott Bullock said:
And with all that, we still have studios getting fired en masse, or shutting down entirely. Many of these studios have made good games too.
 

Raziel_Likes_Souls

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believer258 said:
arc1991 said:
"Games Officially King of the Entertainment Sales Hill"

Something is not right here?

April fool? :L
So I'm not the only one who thought of a certain cartoon about beer-chugging rednecks when I first saw the title...

Anyway, the only thing I have to say is this: Great! This means that anyone who points at and makes fun of people who play video games are starting to go down into the minority. Maybe in 5 or so years, something like Red Dead Redemption will be thought of just as well as, say, The King's Speech. Hey, I tried to pick something recent.
Boy, that ain't right.

But we're at least further away from our roots of Pong.