Can we now put a rest to...

[FordSVT]

... the whole "Games vs Movies" discussion?

Apparently, 14-30 year old males have the coin to buy and the time to see both a high profile video game and a summer blockbuster in the same week.

There's definitely enough room and time for both.

 

[FPAlpha]

Additionally i never understood the hype about first week numbers being so all out important.

If the movie is good people will talk about it and recommend it to friends so they'll go in the 2nd week or even later (and some go multiple times to the same movie).

If a movie stinks this exact word of mouth will sink it despite a multi-million promotion campaign and it will drop so fast past the initial release week numbers that it won't break even.

 

[Mike Farley]

Movies these days don't have the shelf life of movies in the past. Star Wars played in some theaters for over a year. And then was brought back to theaters for a "special engagement" every summer for the next few years.

The advent of the home video market has steadily shrunk the amount of time a movie spends in the theaters. Once you had at least a year before a film hit video. Plenty of time to leave movies in the theaters to make money. Now the home market release window is more like 3-6 months! Movies have to make as much of their money in the first few weeks because once you get past, oh the first month or so, people become much more likely to just wait for the DVD.