Why does Hollywood still act like it runs entertainment when the numbers prove otherwise?
Hollywood likes to pretend it’s still the main event. The red carpets, the awards, the critics pretending their opinions matter. Meanwhile, the numbers tell a different story. In 2023, games made $184 billion. Movies made $42 billion. Four times as much. It’s not even a contest.
The funny part is that most people still think movies must be bigger. They’re louder in marketing, they dominate billboards, and they’ve got a century of history behind them. But financially, cinema is a shrinking sideshow. Gaming is the main act, and it has been for years.
Hollywood’s business model is fundamentally broken. Studios burn hundreds of millions on single productions, then pray audiences show up on opening weekend. Most movies lose money. The entire industry runs on the hope that one or two massive hits will cover the losses from everything else. It’s gambling with terrible odds.
Games work differently. A successful game can generate revenue for years, sometimes decades. Counter-Strike is over two decades old and still printing money. World of Warcraft launched in 2004 and continues pulling in billions through subscriptions, expansions, and microtransactions. Movies get one theatrical run, maybe some streaming residuals, then fade into irrelevance.
The engagement gap is staggering. People watch a movie for two hours and move on. They play games for hundreds, sometimes thousands of hours. Fortnite players have collectively spent billions of hours in-game. No movie franchise comes close to that level of sustained attention.
Gaming also solved the global market problem that Hollywood still struggles with. Games translate across cultures more easily than dialogue-heavy films. A Japanese strategy game can find massive audiences in Europe and North America without expensive localization beyond text translation. Movies face language barriers, cultural references that don’t translate, and censorship issues that can kill international distribution.
The creative control difference is stark too. Movie studios interfere constantly, focus-group everything to death, and water down artistic vision to appeal to the widest possible audience. Game developers, especially independent ones, can create exactly what they want and find their specific audience. The result is more innovation, more risk-taking, and more genuine creativity.
Technology favors games as well. Movie production costs keep climbing as audiences expect bigger spectacles. Game development costs vary wildly, but indie developers can create hits with small teams and modest budgets. Among Us was made by three people and became a global phenomenon. No three-person team is making a blockbuster movie.
The demographic shift tells the real story. Kids and teenagers spend their entertainment time gaming, not watching movies. They’re growing up in Minecraft and Roblox, not movie theaters. Each generation that comes of age cares less about cinema and more about interactive entertainment.
Hollywood keeps making the same mistake: treating games like a inferior medium while the audience votes with their wallets. They adapt video games into terrible movies instead of learning from game storytelling techniques. They chase spectacle while games master player agency and meaningful choice.
The entertainment crown changed hands years ago. Games won through better business models, superior audience engagement, global accessibility, and technological advantages. Movies can keep their award ceremonies and red carpets. The money and the future belong to gaming.
So here’s the real question: if gaming dominance is this obvious to anyone looking at the data, why does Hollywood still get treated as the premier entertainment industry?
