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Video Games: A New Type Of Blockbuster

Are video games overtaking Hollywood, TV and music?

A quiet revolution has swept through the home entertainment market in Britain over the past couple of years, leaving an unexpected victor.

Last year, games took a commanding lead over both video and music in British homes, with the market growing by 7.5% to reach £2.5bn, according to the Entertainment Retailers Association. This beat 2014's video and music sales of £2.2bn and £1bn respectively, placing games firmly atop the entertainment pile.

Dr Jo Twist, CEO of gaming trade group UK Interactive Entertainment, said, "Games have, for a long time, eclipsed films in sales of entertainment products, and are also rivalling the budgets of the big Hollywood releases."

People play video games more than they watch the biggest films


In total, gamers have played 'Destiny' for more than 2 billion hours, with the most dedicated players racking up 3,000 hours each in the game over the past year, according to VG247.com.

Cinema audiences are nowhere near as patient.

For example, this summer’s smash hit, 'Jurassic World', sold approximately 331 million tickets around the world (based on a gross of $1.1 billion and an average global cinema ticket price of $4.86, according to Statista).

With the film’s two hour and five minute running time this works out at just under 689 million hours of view time, falling some way short of the devotion gamers lavish on their entertianment.
 
Video games last longer than TV shows


On average, each of 'Destiny’s 20 million players has played the game for an average of 100 hours.

Even devotees of the insanely popular TV show 'Game Of Thrones' can't manage that. The entire five series of the show clocks in at a pretty lengthy 45.8 hours.

As impressive as that is, it's less than half the average gameplay time of 'Destiny' in the last 12 months. Of course, we can't say that fans haven't watched the entire five series more than twice, but we'd surprised if 100 million people had entertained the idea.

Game trailers now generate more excitement than film ones


When game developer Bungie showed off the trailer for the expansion 'Destiny: The Taken King' it was watched more than eight million times.

This is a trailer not for a game, but for an update to a game and (at the time of writing) it was watched more times than the latest trailer for Jennifer Lawrence’s upcoming movie 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2'.

'Destiny' creators Bungie pioneered the 'event' game trailer with a spectacular video for 'Halo 3', entitled 'Believe', in 2007.

The videos showed a model battlefield, resembling the game, but were created using human actors at an estimated cost of $10 million.

Wired magazine wrote, "The release of 'Halo 3' this week was an event that stretched far beyond our little gaming world. Everyone from The New York Times to Mother Jones wanted to cover it."

Games break new ground

When 'Destiny' launched in September 2014, the game's characters and universe were entirely new and it became the fourth-highest-selling game of the year in just a few weeks.

Hollywood rarely dares to break new ground in this fashion as a look at this year's top blockbusters proves.

The top three films at the 2015 box office are 'Jurassic World', 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' and 'Furious 7'. All well-worn franchises, one of which comes from equally well-worn comic books.

For studios with big ideas and deep pockets, gaming is a new way to bet big.

Before 'Destiny' launched, publisher Activision predicted it would be the biggest new IP launch in history.

Within five days, it was.

Video games are future-proof


Gamers have embraced downloading far more quickly than film fans or music listeners.

Dr Jo Twist, CEO of the UK Interactive Entertainment says, "digital sales of games outnumbered digital sales of music and video combined in Britain, which shows just how popular games are."

In 2014, digital sales of games were £1.5bn and overtaken physical sales. Games have used the digital era to ‘bounce back’ into the digital era faster than either films or music. While physical boxed software sales decreased by -7% (to reach £0.9bn) in 2014, the digital sales grew by +19%.