KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF THE VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY
The video game industry is characterized by relatively short shelf life of video games, and continuing advances in technology at the hardware level that make it necessary to update the quality level of software. Typically, games run only on a particular hardware platform, and there can be some animosity if software developers write for more than one platform û for example, if a company supplies titles to Nintendo and Sony.
The video game industry is similar to the movie industry in the way that games are createdùwith actors, producers and scriptsùas well as in the fact that they are an audio-visual experience for the consumer. The two industries are also similar in that they depend on a distribution network that must decide whether to purchase a particular title well before it is actually released; this can represent a significant investment if the title does not do well. Most publishers have a no-return policy in the video game industry, and if patrons do not buy tickets to a particular movie, the theater cannot request its money back from the distributor.
However, the two industries differ in that the movie industry does not have a counterpart to the hardware platform of the video game industry. To some degree, Nintendo and Sony are similar to movie studios, working with different directors, for example. However, a movie produced for Warner Brothers can be shown in any theater, just as a movie produced for Universal can also be shown in any theater. Directors and actors who work for one studio on one movie can easily work for another studio on another movie, and the movie theaters will distribute movies with any actors and directors. The video game industry, with its powerful hardware platform developers, resembles the movie industry of the 1930s through 1960s when the studio system was in place and when actors and directors could only work with one studio for a given ...