Which industry earns the most? Games or film?
I'm trying to examine the claim that the computer game industry earns more than the film industry these days, such as this one. I'm not sure it is in fact true, but my brief research indicates that at least they appear to be on the same billion dollar level.
This factsheet claims that the annual global box office revenue for films amount to 21.4 billion $ (if you take home rentals, dvds and videos into account the number is of course much higher)
This press release announcing a "Worldwide Market Forecasts for the Video Game and Interactive Entertainment Industry" lists the global markets sales (??) for this sector in 2002 as being 20.7 billion $.

So currently the score seems to be 1-1 (21.4 versus 20.7 billion). I'd love to see some more precise figures taken from some available reports. Furthermore, ff these numbers tentatively measure the number of sold tickets and game boxes, it gives us no clue as what gets to be used the most, films or games, if we include pirate copies, privately borrowed films and games etc. The last statistics would be very interesting to get hold of, if one such, however hypothetic it may be, exists.

If you are reading this and have access to any form of reliable numbers, please contact me :)
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:45