UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
Most games, including AAA games, don't make a billion dollars, just like most movies. But that's also beside the point.
I keep saying it, but total revenue isn't what matters here. If you sell 1000 copies of something at $10,000 a piece, you've pulled in $10 million. If you sell a million copies of something at $10, you've also pulled in $10 million. Which base do you think is more valuable to a theme park where volume matters? A theme park doesn't want only 1000 people; that's not how their business functions (unless, of course, they could charge those 1000 people $10,000 to enter -- which is kind of what Disney is doing with the Starcruiser, although it remains to be seen how well it will work long-term).
How?
Unless you're misreading outsell. When I say outsell, I'm talking in terms of units sold, not dollars -- it's what I've talked about in every single post I've made. That's the only thing that matters in this discussion because the point of theme park lands/attractions is to attract guests, so you want the widest possible customer base. Also, to be clear, I'm only talking about PC/console games; mobile gaming is a whole other thing.
The top movies in a year are generally selling 50+ million tickets (Top Gun: Maverick sold around 75 million this year, I think); the top video games usually max out around 10-15 million sold in a year. GTA 5 has sold over 100 million, but that's a wild outlier and it's also been released like 5 times across different platforms over a 10 year span. I think Minecraft is the only other game that's cracked 100 million, and it's also been selling for well over a decade. Plus you're only seeing box office numbers for films -- the number of people who have seen it increases even more when you consider physical item sales, streaming, etc.
I really don't see a way to argue that your average highly successful game has had more eyes on it than your average highly successful film. There are multiple reasons for that -- a film requires less time commitment, it's cheaper than buying a game, it doesn't require buying special equipment (console or gaming PC), e.g. -- but it's still true.
EDIT: I mentioned this before, but I want to clarify so people who get knee jerk defense about gaming as a hobby understand I'm not attacking it. I have a Playstation 5 (and a bunch of older consoles) and a $2500 gaming laptop. I love video games. I'm just realistic about reach to the general public for individual games compared to other forms of media.
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