You might think, based on Hollywood’s hard work and even even harder marketing, that only big movies make millions. Video games are where the really big money flows.
2 min read
This story originally appeared on PCMag
Rockstar Games has a hit with Red Dead Redemption 2. And as the latest chart from Statista shows, it’s even a bigger deal than Marvel’s Avengers franchise.
Using data from video game companies and Box Office Mojo, which tracks the money-making of any and every movie ever made, Statista’s chart shows that the games from Rockstar have much bigger debuts than the biggest films of the last few years — Avengers: Infinity War, The Fate of the Furious in 2017, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015.
Even the biggest movie haul on opening weekend was Avengers at $641 million (worldwide); Rockstar’s top two titles both beat that. And one of them was Grand Theft Auto V back in 2013, which took in a cool $1 billion in sales in three days, making it the fastest-selling title of all time.
To be fair, both Avengers: IW and Star Wars: TFA each managed to clear a full $2 billion worldwide box office eventually, making them the fourth and third biggest movies ever, behind only Avatar and Titanic. (The Fate of the Furious hit only $1.2 billion globally.) And domestically, Star Wars: TFA is the biggest U.S. hit ever, even over Avatar.
Grand Theft Auto V, on the other hand, has no less than seven Guinness World Records (including, as mentioned, fastest game to hit $1 billion). As of May 2018, with 95 million copies sold, GTAV had generated $6 billion in profits. It has been hailed as the “most profitable entertainment product ever.” All bow down before the extended life-span of video games, capable of up to three times the money-making power of the movies. If Red Dead Redemption 2 can even come close to rivalling it, big movie stars may start to feel a chill as their CGI counterparts reap the rewards.
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