GTA4 & Tony Stark Kill A Dumb Idea

Last year with the release of Halo (the ever popular XBox first person shooter) we saw the beginning of a heavy PR campaign to place the blame of decreasing Box Office revenue on video games. You see, the fact that a movie fails to live up to studio estimates no longer is solely due to the quality of the film. It apparently has to do with pirates, weather & now video game releases. A popular video game (so the theory went) draws disposable cash from the same core demographic as most films and therefor if a $50 video game comes out the same week as a movie then it will naturally kill the first week revenue of that film.

The theory was a joke almost from the moment that it came out of Studio Exec’s mouths and was reported on by everyone including PC World: Halo 3 Triggers Worst Box Office October in Eight Years? but no one had any solid example to disprove the idea.

Half a year later comes the epic match up of Grand Theft Auto 4 & Iron Man. There could not have been two better products with the same audience. The anticipation for both was extremely high for months if not years in advance.

Who would sink? Who would swim? Which would come out alive?

In the end the answer was a clear and resounding……BOTH.

GTA4 had a first week sales of over 1 million units in England alone where it broke previous first week sales records. Estimates of 6 million units sold worldwide, generating $400 million for Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.

Iron Man on the other end had a weekend box office of over $200 million worldwide. With expectations of breaking $300 million within a month.

So in the end what did the battle show? That you make a good game or movie and you will get people to pay. You make something like “The Heartbreak Kid” and you get nowhere fast. Time to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new scapegoat for that $100 million flop you have coming down the pipe.