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When the "Spider-Man 3" movie came out last summer, it took in $151 million in its first weekend, and $240 million over the first ten days -- a record. "Grand Theft Auto 4" -- the new videogame -- has already grossed more than double that, some $500 million in its first week. (See 'Grand Theft Auto' sales top $500 mln in 1st week.)
That's real money. Of course there are many ways to measure and compare -- the top grossing film of all time, "Titanic" (1997) took in some $1.8 billion worldwide in inflation-adjusted dollars over its lifetime. Yet, "Spider-Man 3" remains the top opening-weekend film, in gross revenues, and "Grand Theft Auto 4" has clearly shown that console-based videogames can generate as much, if not more consumer spending in a very short time frame.
And as reported here previously, that spending is spilling over to the hardware side of this category as well. (See Gritty GTA4 may help Sony wrest turf from Microsoft
).
Shoot-em-up violent videogames may not be everyone's taste, however. Now the challenge for the console videogame industry is to come up with a blockbuster title that can garner the kind of half-billion dollar revenues that "GTA4" has achieved, while broadening the mass appeal to the wider audience that films like "Spider-Man 3" and "Titanic" appeal to. Is that possible?
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