The Economics of Star Citizen In 2020
Oct 9, 2026 · 14 min · 11 segments
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Oct 9, 2026 · 14 min · 11 segments
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The video game industry is worth an estimated 150 billion US dollars in 2019, more than music, television, and the movie industry combined, which is just mind-blowing, and it's continuing to grow at an impressive rate.
What is often forgotten amongst all of this though is that video games are a business.
Their end goal is not to give you enjoyment but rather to get your money.
The increased commercialization of this gigantic industry has been increasingly under scrutiny with controversial issues like loot boxes and microtransactions angering a lot of customers who just want to buy a game and then play that game.
Most major video games today fear a pretty similar product lifecycle to a movie.
They are funded and produced by studios, they are then released, generate a majority of their revenue from initial sales, and then see a sharp decline as sales fall due to new releases and or audience retention.
Video games have been extending their lifecycle through the aforementioned microtransactions, but for the most part, most video games still follow this new release sales curve.
This works out just fine for both movies and video game studios because it means that budgets and investment returns are very easy to forecast.
If $100 million is put to the development of a new Call of Duty game, it is likely to see returns from that investment within the first few days after release.
And yes, there are box office records for video games just the same as there are for movies, with Grand Theft Auto V being the highest grossing game from sales of game copies and in-game purchases.
There is another type of media consumption that is even more...
The video game industry is worth an estimated 150 billion US dollars in 2019, more than music, television, and the movie industry combined, which is just mind-blowing, and it's continuing to grow at an impressive rate.
What is often forgotten amongst all of this though is that video games are a business.
Their end goal is not to give you enjoyment but rather to get your money.
The increased commercialization of this gigantic industry has been increasingly under scrutiny with controversial issues like loot boxes and microtransactions angering a lot of customers who just want to buy a game and then play that game.
Most major video games today fear a pretty similar product lifecycle to a movie.
They are funded and produced by studios, they are then released, generate a majority of their revenue from initial sales, and then see a sharp decline as sales fall due to new releases and or audience retention.
Video games have been extending their lifecycle through the aforementioned microtransactions, but for the most part, most video games still follow this new release sales curve.
This works out just fine for both movies and video game studios because it means that budgets and investment returns are very easy to forecast.
If $100 million is put to the development of a new Call of Duty game, it is likely to see returns from that investment within the first few days after release.
And yes, there are box office records for video games just the same as there are for movies, with Grand Theft Auto V being the highest grossing game from sales of game copies and in-game purchases.
There is another type of media consumption that is even more...
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