It appears the release of Halo 3 is being blamed for poor box office numbers in October. We all know about the $170 million in a day, $300 million in a week, 2.7 million people on Xbox live (that is 1/3 of all live members) and the fact that it was the largest entertainment product launch in history. It appears there are some cascading impacts in other industries, specifically the box office.  Sales were down 27% for the weekend of October 5th from the same weekend last year. Many film executives are convinced audiences stayed home to play Halo...I know that I was...

I talked before about the Halo marketing machine and how the push behind this title is on par with a major motion picture. So with the upcoming release of titles like Mass Effect and the ever popular Grand Theft Auto titles it looks as though movie studios are now looking at what it will take to regain the attention of 18-24 year old gamers who are content driven and looking for immediate control and interaction with their entertainment. 

Look for more titles that have large audiences or main stream potential to start receiving similar market penetration strategies as we all know that marketing is the art of taking a once succesful concept and trying to repeat that success again and again.

It just goes to show that how we consume information and how we spend our time, especially around entertainment, has and will continue to shift to a more on-demand, user sought, and focused on instant gratification style of consumption. Games like Halo empower users to control the content and provide a sticky experience that is driven by social interaction. It is difficult for a 2 hour movie to do the same thing and Hollywood is very aware of this trend.

Read the complete post at http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Theblackfin-ThoughtsFromTomEdwards/~3/171387709/halo-3-blamed.aspx