Video Games to overtake Movie Business?

Businessweek is reporting that

Through November, the U.S. game industry is up a whopping 50 percent to $13.12 billion. Considering that December sales can often wind up accounting for as much as 25 to 30 percent of annual sales, the industry will easily break all previous records in 2007, likely coming in around $18 billion or more. And the $18 billion estimate doesn’t even include all the online subscriptions, casual games, micro-transactions and more.

Consider this: According to the Motion Picture Association (MPA), in 2006 all-media sales (movies, home video/DVDs, and television) in the U.S. totaled $24.3 billion.

Video Games are almost 75% the size of the Movies Business! And growing at close to 50% per annum!!

I have to admit that this stark comparison comes as a huge surprise. In my mental model movies business was the big-bucks larger-than-life mega industry and games were ’appetizers’ and ‘desserts’ to the main course – the feature film. Admittedly, the show biz is a mature industry and is not expected to have a blistering rate of growth – but Gaming almost as large as the entire Movie business?

Shocking.. and a smack on the side of the head to take the industry seriously - as a marketing and advertising channel at least. It is not just fun and games any more. Huge audience, mindshare and eye-balls. Mucho Moolah involved….