by B. Ender

Created on: July 30, 2008

Just recently, the game Grand Theft Auto IV brought in more revenue on its launch day than the best single-day grossing movie ever, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Also, there is also the possibility that game sales possibly sell more than DVD sales! Video games are hot products in the modern world and are rapidly growing every year. Why is this such? Let me try to explain.

For one thing, video games are interactive. Although video games do cost a lot more than movies, movies only have one outcome. No matter how much you told that person in the horror movie you just watched not to go into the dark room, he/she still did. In video games, you are a character in the story, usually the main character too. This way, you can redo things that you previously did, making games highly re playable. You can get several hours out of each games, many more times than the average movie. This is especially true of RPG games, that genre can give you HUNDREDS of hours of game play.

Another factor leading to the success of video gaming is storyline. When the first games came out, there was no storyline. Although they were still fun to play, games couldn't compete with the movie industry because people wanted a story. Over the years, story lines started to appear and go into more depth. Now, games have just about as much story as movies do. Now that games have a well developed storyline, they could compete directly with movies. This opened up the video game industry to more people, people who wanted to have a reason to be doing a certain thing in a game.

Now that gaming has become a multi-billion dollar industry, game developers and publishers wanted to expand their demographic. They spread out from something that appealed mainly to kids (such as with Nintendo and Sega back in the early game console days) to appealing to more mature gamers (like Playstation and its "Mature" titles). Over the years, game consoles appealed mainly to the Mature audiences, but with the launch of the Nintendo Wii, attention is going back to children and family-oriented games. With thousands of titles targeted towards several different demographics, the video game industry could cash in on all ages of people. Due to these factors and the fact that games are just plain fun, the video game industry now rivals that of the Motion Picture industry.

Video games will only get better in the future, not only with better graphics, sound, and animation, but with better game play also. Story lines will be even more well developed and the gaming industry will continue to post record sales and revenue. Video games are the new main source of entertainment for many people around the world, and I don't see that coming to an end anytime soon.

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