Diesel, to answer your question about the net

[chillzatl]

"how far back do I go"

Myself, and kudzu, go back before compuserve, prodigy and all those pre-internet services. 2400baud BBS days baby. Kudzu used to run a few bbs's around town. ahh, the good ole days! when downloading a floppy disks worth of data took ALL FREAKIN NIGHT LONG!! haha

[Diesel]

HAhA..

I remember creating computer generated worlds using SPRITE Graphics on my Commodore 64! Had I only known that the gaming industry would kill for the things I could imagine and put on the computer screen.

[drzachary]

Quote:

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"how far back do I go"

Myself, and kudzu, go back before compuserve, prodigy and all those pre-internet services. 2400baud BBS days baby. Kudzu used to run a few bbs's around town. ahh, the good ole days! when downloading a floppy disks worth of data took ALL FREAKIN NIGHT LONG!! haha

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I ran a couple of BBSes in Atlanta. wAcKyLaNd was one.

[chillzatl]

you and me both. It's a shame I never had the patience for coding. Did you know that the gaming industry made more money than the movie industry last year (and has for a few years.)? I think it was like 200 billion last year. That's crazy!!

[Diesel]

As long as you have EA Sports and there's some kind of First player action game, there will always be lots of Money. I would think that more households have a gaming unit of some kind than has a PC of some kind. That's crazy.

Moreover, America is a wonderful Market.

A friend of mine visited " the land of smiles" and he said that the things we spend $100s of dollars on, they get for less than $10.00...

But the real profit is in the price margin. They can overprice games here by 6000 to 7000%.

Most good movies will at most maybe make 5 times as much as it cost to make it and get it produced... Even the best indy films don't make that much in profit margins.. I don't remember the % from farenheit 911, but it's probably nothing compared to the profit margin made on a XBox 360...

[chillzatl]

well from a console standpoint, they actually lose money on the hardware for quite a few years. Last report I read was that the xbox360 costs them about 170 per unit extra. But the money is in the games. They lose money to put the console out there and then make it back when the person buys 10-15 games (or more) over teh life of the console. I think the projected loss per unit on the PS3 is about $350!

But yah, games are a lot bigger money maker than movies because of what you said. A movie that makes 5x it's cost is going to be considered insanely profitable. Typically a movie costs around 50-100mil to make (more for big blockbusters). The most expensive game to develop to date was world of warcraft, which came in at about 63 million. They charge $50 for the game and then $15 per month. Last I read they have 6 million paying customers world wide. That's not just 6 million copies sold. But 6 million current, paying customers, at $15 per. They are raking in about 90 mil per month. Granted, their upkeep costs are high. But I'd figure they are easily pocketing half that in profits. You factor in the $50 that each person paid initially (including those that didn't stick with it), they've probably made around 1.8 billion gross off the game since it's launch in november 04.

that's freakin INSANE!