While some news sources are happy just to spew Microsoft hype in the hours leading up to the launch of Halo 3, others are attempting to put "the biggest day in entertainment history" into some sort of context.
The LA Times, for example, has an interesting article comparing the shoot-'em-up behemoth with Spider-Man 3 in purely monetary terms. It begins by exploding the confused, unspecific myth about the games business being 'worth more' than movies these days:
Movies also generate far more revenue, largely because they have sales outlets other than theaters. Games have one shot -- at retail. As a result, the movie business is projected to hit $84.3 billion globally this year, more than double the $37.5 billion forecast for the game industry, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
So movies are big on revenue because they have lots of distribution channels - cinemas, video rental, retail. But games are top when it comes to profit, because the costs are teeny in comparison. Whereas Spider-Man 3 can expect a profit margin of around 46%, Halo 3 can reasonably hope for a whopping 90%:
In terms of cost, "Spider-Man 3" weighed in at about $400 million to make and release in 107 countries. Producing and marketing the DVDs cost an additional $100 million, and Sony spent tens of millions on such expenses as overhead, profit participation and residual payments. In addition, stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst and filmmaker Sam Raimi are believed to get portions of the box-office tally... The total cost to Microsoft for "Halo 3": a little more than $60 million.
Just imagine what Microsoft could achieve if it were able to target users beyond the "hard-core geeks who are into mature content" (in the words of Heroes producer and Halo fan, Jesse Alexander). Thing is though, the mainstream videogame industry - especvially in the west - is very much geared toward the big opening weekend; just like the blockbuster movie industry. But demographic groups beyond young males don't go in for this sort of hype-fest experience. Look at a list of biggest opening weekends and they're mostly bloke films.
Movies of predominate interest to women tend to be growers, because women trust word-of-mouth over soft drinks tie-ins, endless TV ads and the musings of professional reviewers. So if videogame publishers fancy taking a decent sustained stab at other groups, they don't just need to change the way they design games, they need to look at how they're marketed and sold. Nintendo's Brain Training and Nintendogs titles managed to shift millions of copies to non-gamers without the marketing mega-bluster afforded to Halo 3.
Comparisons with Spider-Man 3 are interesting, but we're still stuck in an entertainment ghetto. Microsoft is obsessed with beating the 150 million dollars made by the third (and worst) Spidey film in its first few days, but perhaps it should be thinking about the longer, wider spread of, say, High School Musical. Disturbing but quite possibly true.
