Monday, September 24, 2007

Halo 3 is the biggest entertainment product launch in history

Halo 3, the latest installment of one of the most popular video game franchises of all times, is launching today at midnight.

It is expected to bring Microsoft $150M in revenue on its first day. That will put it up there with the biggest opening weekend ticket sales for a movie (Spiderman 3: $151M).

Overall revenue over the lifetime of the video game is expected to hit $600M or more. Spiderman 3's total revenue (merchandising, DVD sales, ticket sales) is expected to hit $1.3B.

Where Halo 3 reigns supreme over Spiderman 3, however, is profit margin. Business analysts are expecting Halo 3 to have profit margins close to 90%, while Spiderman 3 will "only" have a 46% profit margin due to much higher production costs. The overall profit in dollars is about even between the two blockbuster products.

Update: Microsoft has now counted their money from Halo 3 launch day. The results come in as an impressive $170M as first day sales.

Monday, September 17, 2007

GamePolitics.com celebrates Constitution Day

Apparently September 17th is Constitution Day in the United States.

GamePolitics.com is celebrating the day by publishing a series of articles about the constitutional issues regarding video games. The articles would be a great read for our elected officials who seem hellbent on wasting our money on pointless, and unconstitutional, laws regulating video games.

The first article is about an article by Julie Hilden, a First Amendment expert. It's a primer on why laws regulating violence in video games have all failed. She makes a great argument about the difference of perpetrating violence and depicting violence.

The second article is regarding a speech by Professor Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard University Law School. He recently gave a speech at Progress and Freedom Foundation's 13th annual Aspen Summit about First Amendment issues relating to technology. His speech goes into considerable detail to explain why video games enjoy First Amendment protection in the first place.