14 DAY TRIAL // Activision was right. Bringing in 550 million dollars in revenue in the first five days on sales, Modern Warfare 2, the sequel created by Infinity Ward, has become the biggest entertainment release in history, beating out videogames like Grand Theft Auto IV and movies like The Dark Knight and the various Harry Potter releases. The talk about the Citizen Kane of videogames should subside for a while as analysts discus about how videogaming is set to displace movies as the big medium for entertainment releases.
The question is whether videogaming really wants to take the place of movies in the entertainment area. The budgets are similar, especially for the biggest releases, and the development times are in the same general range. The gains are similarly impressive and the media attention is getting similar levels for the most important launches, like GTA IV, Modern Warfare 2 or New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Wii. And both the world of movies and that of videogames are now dominated by huge franchises, big explosions, macho main characters and the 18 to 45 male demographic.
One huge area where the two industries are still radically different is availability of product. Most indie movie releases, until they make it really big like Slumdog Millionaire or Juno, are only offered in a few theaters in limited release and a lot of people cannot actually get to see them.
In the meantime, Steam, Xbox Live and the PSN together with other similar digital distribution services mean that indie videogames like Braid or Trials HD can still make it big, while the iPhone offers a mobile platform where gaming quickly drops in price to 0.99 dollars. And almost everyone can play any game outed, if they are willing to pay the money and sign up to a distribution service. This is sadly lacking for movies and as the two industries begin to look most like one another, let's hope that gaming manages to get big while still carrying for the smaller players.