[SmokingJoe]

Video games cost more than movie tickets yes, but then MW2 is
# 1. Adult rated, so leaving out a big chunk of the population
# 2 . Bought mostly by young adult males, leaving out women, old folks and most of the population.
# 3. Has over 90% of it's sales on the XBOX 360 and the PS3, which combined have an install base of just 60 million.
# 4. Avatar on the other hand, is open to the entire 6 billion population on the planet, including housewives, grand parents, etc, plus lots of people pay multiple times to watch it.

All that makes MW2’s records even more impressive.

[discostu]

But when you’re just comparing dollars none of that really matters. Because the games cost 5 times as much it’s not that hard for them to make twice as much money. And you just compared the domestic grosses for Avatar ($352 million), world wide (where the 6 billion population is) it’s pulled in a full billion bucks.

I’m not saying MW2’s sales aren’t impressive. I’m saying that using them to dismiss Avatar’s revenues is silly. It’s like comparing car sales revenues to bicycle sales revenues, the core math is a simply unfair comparison. Any successful video game WILL earn more money than a similarly successful movie. Again look at how the numbers translate, Avatar’s domestic revenue equates to nearly 50 million sold tickets, MW2 revenue equates to around 11 million sold games. Both very successful within their industry, and it’s not really a hit on Avatar that its sales equate to so many fewer dollars than MW2.