While Marvel’s Avengers Infinity War was a smash hit at the US box office, figures have been released which show that America’s video game industry is smashing its domestic film industry in sales. Even though these figures only cover the first half of the year, the trend for consumer spending is, according to the experts, heavily in favor of games. During the past 6 months, the American video game industry netted itself more than double the $8.1 billion collected by the film industry.
Judging from the numbers, it looks like popular games in 2018 performed better than popular movies on the whole. One such example is the much-anticipated Black Panther, which ended up netting $298 million compared to the $310 million picked up by Ubisoft in the wake of Far Cry 5. What’s impressive about both those figures is that fact that they were drawn entirely from opening week statistics. We already know how hyped up everyone was for Black Panther, so to see a product outperform that is spectacular in its own right.
SyFy reports that the types of games driving this record engagement include titles from the entire gamut of the industry. We’re talking about “casual” mobile games and their microsections. We’re also talking about huge AAA titles which fans shell out hundreds of dollars on collector’s editions for. In any regards, the variety present within the games industry is clearly paying off in commercial dividends for developers and publishers involved.
With plenty of highly-anticipated releases sitting pretty in the second half of 2018, it won’t come as a surprise to us if the figures for the rest of year show a similar disparity between consumer spending on games versus consumer spending on movies. That being said, this is also an opportunity for those with film franchises to consider investing in this lucrative virtual sphere. Games have always chased after movie deals in the past, but perhaps this is proof that the tables should be turned.
