Video games muscle in on movies

Traces of the word "video" linger beneath a new sign that just went up on a suburban Blockbuster store here. In its place hangs a logo for Game Rush, a new division created by the movie-rental chain to tap into one of the fastest growing markets in global entertainment: video games. Inside, more than half the shelf space is given to video-game sales and rentals.

"It's still Blockbuster," says employee Scott Dolgin, wearing a shirt featuring both the old and new logos. "But more people want games rather than movies, so we just have to move [to] where people are going."

Younger people, that is. Video games rarely register on people over 30 - except when the games are implicated in Columbine-style violence, or as happened last week, a game comes along that promises record sales. But this past week's release of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" - the fifth installment of one of the industry's most popular franchises - was an event that even made the morning news shows.

Although the company, Rockstar Games, will not release sales figures, industry watchers predict that "GTA: San Andreas" sales will approach 5 million units in the first week alone. At $50 a box, that's an eye-popping $250 million for just one game.

The interactive-entertainment industry has been vying with Hollywood for top dollar in recent years. Figures on video-game profits vary all the way up to $30 billion worldwide, including hardware and software sales; even conservative estimates peg it close to $10 billion. Now, first-week sales of a single game - "GTA" - are rivaling the box-office numbers for such hit movies as "Spiderman" or "Finding Nemo."

But other than sporadic debates over the role of video games in perpetuating a violent youth culture, mainstream media have largely ignored this 800-pound gorilla. However, as the demographic ages (players include those in their 20s and 30s) and the industry begins to beat movies' box office, pundits say it's time to acknowledge a cultural change at work.

"Consumers are choosing video and computer games as their choice of entertainment for the 21st century," says Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). "Games have made tremendous advances over the past decade, both creatively and technologically, drawing more people into immersive and complex virtual worlds." Over the next decade, as younger audiences who have grown up with video games move into adulthood and parenthood, the demand for video games will only expand, he predicts. According to a recent ESA survey, 54 percent of American households will buy one or more video games in 2004.

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