Proving once again that you can make a statistic say damn near anything you want it to, TV Guide reported today that the opening day sales for Halo 3 made it the "biggest entertainment launch in history" when it sold $170 million on its launch day.
Don't get me wrong. It's an impressive figure. But the article tries to make a meal out of the fact that it out-dollar-amounted the highest opening day film (Spider-man 3) and opening day book (the last Harry Potter book). And this is like comparing apples and walruses.
Movie ticket prices continue to rise what seems like every other month, but a copy of Halo still costs around 5 or 6 times what a movie ticket costs. Even Harry Potter, at $35 (like anyone paid the cover price for it, though) -- you could almost buy two of them for one Halo 3. (And I know of a few households that did indeed buy more than one). So if they're trying to deceieve anyone into thinking, "holy crap, more people bought this game than saw Spider-man!", just stop.
Not that even if we were just talking films, Spider-man 3's tally should be seen as impressive. The fact is, when you adjust for inflation, I believe the all time movie money maker (Gone With the Wind) has set a record that will never be broken.
You simply don't have to go to the movies anymore. If you don't like the experience (and with its many flaws, it's not hard to sympathize with that opinion), then you can just wait a couple months for the DVD. Or even on the other end of the spectrum, if you go to a movie and absolutely love it? Well, you still probably won't go see it again in the theater. You'll still wait a couple months for the DVD. Neither case applying when Gone With the Wind ran in theaters, of course.
But whoa... major digression. Point being, raw data can be trustworthy. (Sometimes.) Interpretations of that data? Look out.
3 comments:
If news agencies bothered to check against inflation, half the entertainment news would disappear, which is bad, because we're supposed to be bombarded with "BEST EVER" news every other frakkin' day.
Since when is the press concerned with the facts?
Unfortunately this "record" was set by a game that sold so much based solely on hype, not being a unique game.
a friend at work told me his wife asked him "what's the deal with the Halo movie that's coming out?" and he had to explain it was a game not a movie.
here's a statistic: 100% of the people who live in my apartment did not buy Halo 3
the thing that's funny about Halo is that it was such a lost opportunity to create a superstar like Lara Croft or Mario. who the heck is "Master Chief"? you just know somebody's regretting the decision to leave the character unnamed.
the mole
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