
'Grand Theft Auto V' Crosses $1B In Sales - WestCoastJustin
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/09/20/grand-theft-auto-v-crosses-1b-in-sales-biggest-entertainment-launch-in-history/
======
revelation
The important news here is that video games are surpassing other forms of
entertainment. It is evidence of the disconnect between the media, politics
and actual society: every other month you get discussions about video games
causing violence and calls for legal restrictions. Compare this to movies,
where you can produce the most violent splatter horror trash and nobody will
bat an eye.

Meanwhile, people are validating games as the work of art they are with hard
dollars.

~~~
Tloewald
Since when did hard dollars validate works of art? People are buying games --
art will take care of itself.

~~~
eric_cc
I agree that art takes care of itself. As much as I believe that some video
games are works of art, I could not care less if there is nobody else in world
that agrees with me.

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hyperion2010
So the comparisons to other industries are misleading in one sense and deeply
revealing in another.

Movies spread out their sales over an extremely long time compared to games.
This means that box office numbers will be smaller. This ALSO means that they
are not serving many markets that could bring them revenue off the bat.

Games that don't release on all platforms simultaneously have a similar
problem, but nowhere near that of movies which refuse to let people watch them
in their preferred format from the start.

~~~
jmharvey
> Movies spread out their sales over an extremely long time compared to games.

Is that true? It seems like most hundred-million-dollar movies make most of
their money on opening weekend, and after a couple of weeks their (domestic)
box office is basically finished. I'd expect GTA V to keep selling for a
while. The Wikipedia page for GTA IV says it sold approximately 6 million
copies in the first week, and 25 million copies total.

~~~
ajross
We just bought a copy of The Lion King for the kids. Needless to say, they
don't get a whole lot of 1994-era games.

~~~
jlgreco
I suspect Disney may be atypical in that regard. People are constantly having
kids for the first time, and there is then a steady stream of people buying
movies for their kids that they know kids like. Most other genres probably
have not enjoyed much of that.

Most of the value in old movies, going forward, is probably going to be in
padding streaming libraries for Netflix/etc to license. Will _Goodfellas_
itself worth much currently and in the future? Probably not; anybody who wants
that on DVD probably already has it on DVD. A streaming library that includes
movies of the caliber of _Goodfellas_ though? That is probably worth a hefty
chunk of cash.

~~~
boomlinde
> Probably not; anybody who wants that on DVD probably already has it on DVD.

Which is why it comes on Blu-Ray and HD DVD as well, in "special edition" and
"20th anniversary edition".

~~~
jlgreco
True, but I suspect that doesn't massively prolong most movies, only big ones
that people are passionate about ( _Star Wars_ , _The Godfather Trilogy_ ,
etc).

Just randomly picking... 2004. Top 10 movies from that year, and pulling
future media sales predictions out of my ass:

    
    
      Shrek 2                                   kids movie, profitable regardless.
      Spider-Man 2                              probably poor
      The Passion of the Christ                 probably poor
      Meet the Fockers                          nobody cares.
      The Incredibles                           kids movie, profitable regardless.
      Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban  great.
      The Day After Tomorrow                    nobody cares.
      The Bourne Supremacy                      possibly good.
      National Treasure                         nobody cares.
      The Polar Express                         nobody cares.
    

I mean, I am sure all of these will have future releases on new media. There
is no reason _not_ to re-release movies, it is essentially printing money),
but will many of them see dramatic sales that will really change how we view
the profitability of those movies? _Meet the Fockers_ was a good movie, but
nobody is going to give a shit if you re-release it in 3D, 4K resolution,
"hyperdisk". Only a few have that potential I think, and it gets more bleak if
you stop looking at the top 10.

After the initial burst of home media sales, I just don't see most movies
getting anything more than a trickle of revenue. For every movie like _Office
Space_ , there are dozens that aren't.

------
jahewson
These sorts of comparisons are pretty meaningless without inflation adjusted
numbers. That's why films break box office records year, after year, after
year.

~~~
madsushi
Well, games have been around for a far shorter time period than movies, so
you're not comparing games from 1920 to games from today (and thus the overall
effect of inflation is lower). Also, since the former #1 game (BLOPS 2) came
out just a couple of years ago, and GTA V beat it by 60% on launch ($800m to
$500m), inflation didn't play a significant role.

~~~
Steko
That just takes the argument in circles since the former #1 might not have
been the inflation adjusted #1. It may be the case since "launches" weren't
always such a big deal.

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gph
I'd be fascinated to see what they spent 260 million dollars on producing
this.

I'm sure their graphics engine is pretty amazing, but it's not like they
revolutionized anything that I'm aware of. Where did that money go?

~~~
rorrr2

        * Programming (all kinds - from model behavior to 
          game logic to AI to net code, backend, etc)
        * 3D Modeling
        * Texturing
        * Art
        * Scripts (as in narrative)
        * Music and sound effects
        * Voice recording by professional actors
        * Motion capture of actors
        * QA
        * Sys admins
        * Product and project managers
        * All kinds of executives got paid a shit ton for making decisions
        * Equipment for all of the above
        * Software licenses
        * Advertising
        * Packaging

~~~
awwstn
$115m to develop the game, $150 million to market it. [1]

[1][http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-18/grand-
theft-...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-18/grand-theft-auto-v-
is-the-most-expensive-game-ever-and-it-s-almost-obsolete)

~~~
eliben
This makes me sad.

~~~
canttestthis
It shouldn't. Clearly their strategy works.

~~~
eliben
It makes me sad as a developer, because it implies that marketing is more
important than the development effort. It's where the money is, right?

~~~
graeme
That's a fallacy. Money is not the only marker of importance.

Here, marketing had a positive ROI, so they put as much money into it as they
judged profitable.

But if Grand Theft Auto V was an awful game, then the marketing would have
been largely wasted, no matter how much they spent.

Anything good still needs marketing, but marketing won't save a bad product.
There's nothing inherently filthy about marketing.

It's very, very hard to get people to hear about the stuff you do, even if
it's really good.

~~~
ekianjo
I dont agree. Proper marketing can sell you almost anything. Even so-so
products. And its not rare to see not so good games make it to top 10 sales.
The game quality can vary but to sell a lot you can be sure marketing is the
decisive factor.

~~~
gbog
Yes, and we have plenty of examples of successes that came naked, without
marketing. Eg Minecraft.

~~~
dualogy
Nice successes indeed, but not _$1B in a few days_ successes ;))

------
tedivm
This article reads like an advertisement. You'd think Forbes would spend a
little bit more time polishing up those press releases into something that
they could at least pretend was journalism.

~~~
citricsquid
This is not a Forbes article. Forbes have a blogging platform that anyone can
apply to publish on, this article was written by an unpaid contributor. Note
"contributor" next to the author name.

~~~
tedivm
The only difference between a staff post and a contributor is that one line by
their name. If Forbes didn't want me to associate their name with the content
they would have distinguished it better.

~~~
derefr
Same problem with TED's TEDx conferences. Why do so many brands want to throw
away their cachet by stamping their name on random contributors' content?

~~~
tesseractive
Because some distributed content generation platforms like YouTube, the
Huffington Post, Bleacher Report, and others have proved to be enormously
successful and popular, so other content companies have tried to emulate that
success?

------
Pxtl
And yet every news release about the game mocks the horrific violence of the
game and the neckbeards that play it. The generation and cultural gap between
the news media and today's youth, especially young men, is astounding.

------
foobarqux
What is so great about this game? Most of it looks like terrible cut-scene-
choose-your-own-adventure.

~~~
nether
Unfortunately most single player games have devolved into this. It's hard and
risky to develop novel gameplay rather than just building an interactive movie
around tried-and-true game mechanics (run & gun). Most gamers are ok with
this, just like most moviegoers are ok with franchise films
(sequels/reboots/remakes).

Media are just converging toward low-risk, formulaic, and consistently
profitable goods. It happens at a speed inversely proportional with the
complexity of the medium: music has been manufactured for a while, more
recently movies, now games. Novels have proven trickier thus far. Readers seem
to appreciate originality more and are more discerning, with a lot of surprise
hits (and failures). It's only a matter of time before that formula is cracked
though.

~~~
boomlinde
If you had a more fair look at things, I think you'd find that the rich
diversity and sheer amount of music, film and written word available to you
today is greater than at any point in history.

I can only assume that you either just don't know very much about music or you
are mixing up "media" with "the top players in the media industry"

------
jahewson
These sorts of comparisons are pretty meaningless without inflation adjusted
numbers.

------
staunch
If this keeps going they're going to end up as profitable as Minecraft!

~~~
ChuckMcM
Heh, except the cost to develop is much lower. So they will probably never
achieve the same level of profitability, even if they achieve better revenue.

~~~
pisarzp
It doesn't really matter if margins are lower as long they have positive
return (NPV) on every additional dollar spend

------
blah32497
Why hasn't this affected Take-Two's stock noticeably?

~~~
polarix
Stock market valuations take into account expectations, and this clearly met
the market's expectations.

~~~
stanmancan
I'm still confused by this though. Their market cap right now is about 1.5
billion. If GTA 5 sold $1 billion in 3 days, does that mean their whole
valuation is based on this one single game??

~~~
haldujai
Valuation includes liabilities and is generally focused on profits not revenue
(Amazon excepted). Take-two ended up losing 32 million last year on 1.2
billion in revenue.

Take-two had a relatively large run up in July/August likely meaning that
optimistic interpretations of GTA V were already priced in meaning people
already factored the higher than normal profits this year.

------
pgisgay
And that's distributed between 3500 developers last time I heard that worked
on GTAv ?

~~~
jlgreco
Of course not, those profits will be primarily used to build the business
further, or given to the investors.

Do you think that McDonald's distributes their profit across all of their fry-
chefs?

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yawaramin
And 100 in HN comments.

Bazinga.

