Bards R Us said:
And you know this how?
Console games, yes. PC games, IMO, definitely NOT. I could post a truckload of evidence to suggest otherwise.
Uhhhh, last time I checked there were Baldar Gate titles for the Playstation and the Xbox. And we also know that some MMOGs have gone "live" on console. You pretty much have to consider the whole market these days, with a few exceptions.
Googling, I found this on April 14, 2004 on the International Herald Tribune
"In the United States alone, sales of video games and consoles generated $10 billion in revenue last year, surpassing box office ticket sales of $9.5 billion. Hollywood has had mixed success trying to capture some of that popularity by making movies based on computer games.
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But that has not stopped directors, actors and others in the movie business from enviously eyeing the video-game business in hopes of tapping some of its energy and riches for themselves.
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Computer games represent one of the fastest growing, most profitable entertainment businesses. Making movies, by contrast, is getting tougher and more expensive, now costing, with marketing fees, a staggering average of $103 million per film. That is one reason that those with power in Hollywood are avidly seeking to get into the game business while also reshaping standard movie contracts so they can grab a personal share of game rights.
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"There is a great divide that has rarely been crossed," said Joel Silver, the producer of "The Matrix" trilogy, whose creators, Andy and Larry Wachowski, designed games for the second and third "Matrix" movies. But lately, Silver said, with Hollywood directors and studios eager to exploit the appeal of computer games, "everything is changing."
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John Woo, the director of "Mission Impossible 2" and "Face/Off," last year formed Tiger Hill Entertainment, an interactive entertainment company, and is now developing for Sega a video game, which he will own outright, about an elaborate heist. At the same time, he hopes to turn the game into a movie.
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Ridley Scott, best known for science fiction fantasies like "Blade Runner" and "Alien," as well as the historical epic "Gladiator," has been meeting with video-game company executives, too, arguing that games offer greater creative opportunities these days because they are less expensive to make and not constrained by the roughly two-hour time frame of a conventional movie.
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"The idea that a world, the characters that inhabit it and the stories those characters share can evolve with audience participation and, perhaps, exist in a perpetual universe is indeed very exciting to me," said Scott, who is seeking a video-game maker to form a partnership with himself and his brother Tony.
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Even studios, which have long regarded video games as just another licensing opportunity like coffee mugs and T-shirts, are looking for an opening into the business.
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In January, Warner Brothers Entertainment - which turned down the opportunity to develop games based on "The Matrix" movies - hired Jason Hall, a former video-game company founder, to create, produce and distribute video games. Many in Hollywood wonder if its new Warner Brothers Games brand might eventually rival or even supplant established game publishers like Electronic Arts, the Silicon Valley company that leads the industry.
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But for all their superficial production similarities - both often use illustrated storyboards, for example - creating a successful video game relies on different skills and is built on different incentives than making a hit movie.
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"You have to remember," said Seamus Blackley, a co-creator of Microsoft's Xbox game player and an agent at Creative Artists Agency, that there is not "some gaping hole that Hollywood is going to come in and fill."
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In contrast to a conventional movie, with its narrative structure to be viewed by a passive audience, computer games rely on engaging users in various tasks and challenges that can take the story in many directions.
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At the same time, Hollywood has developed a free-agency system in which the most famous and powerful actors and directors demand millions of dollars and receive outlandish perks for lending their talent and name to a project.
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In the video-game world, by contrast, the biggest stars are often little-known salaried software developers and creative comic book-style storytellers who are well paid but do not normally receive a direct cut of a game's profit.
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"We are not trying to pooh-pooh traditional entertainment," said Neil Young, vice president and a general manager at Electronic Arts, which created the game for "Return of the King."
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"But the cultures are very different," he said. "You might be able to get $8 million to direct a film, but making a game like a film is not our objective."
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Hollywood may also have an exaggerated sense of the riches to be made from video games. Despite the growing popularity of computer games, when movie ticket sales are combined with DVD sales and home video rentals, the film industry remains a significantly larger business.
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Still, it looks like a natural synergy, especially given that video games and movies appeal to the same core audience of teenagers and young adults. And as the technology of games has advanced, they have increasingly taken on the look and feel of film, often relying on actual footage from movies and creating realistic scenes and human characters.
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To tap that expertise, the game industry has already turned to movie directors as consultants, paying as much as $250,000 for assignments on everything from rewriting a script to showing a game designer how to shoot a scene. Andrew Davis, the director of "Holes" and "The Fugitive," said he was hired by Ubisoft, which is based in Paris, to help streamline the story line in the company's planned video game of Tom Clancy's "Splinter Cell" series.
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"I still want to make movies," said Davis, who declined to say how much he had been paid. But, he added, getting involved as a consultant was a relatively easy way to learn the video game business while keeping his day job.
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The New York Times
