Iron Man Movie to Lose Revenue Due to GTA IV?
A few months ago, movie executives blamed poor box office sales to the release of Bungie’s popular first person shooter Halo 3. Now, they are predicting the same to happen on the release of Rockstar’s heavily anticipated game, Grand Theft Auto IV.
According to Mike Hickey, one of the analysts who concluded the poor movie sales was partly Halo 3’s fault:
We anticipate the video game release of GTA IV on April 29 could dampen the potential from Iron Man’s theatrical release on May 2,” Hickey said in a Wednesday note regarding Marvel Entertainment stock.
The last significant video game release, Halo 3, generated over $300 million in sales from its first week in the market,” he added. “Halo 3 was released on just one platform, the Xbox 360, and attached nearly 50 percent of the installed base. GTA IV will be released on both the Xbox 360 and PS3, which have both significantly increased their installed bases since the release of Halo 3. A GTA IV 25 percent attach rate to a combined Xbox 360 and PS3 installed base at its April 29 release would imply 5.8 million units sold or roughly $360 million in retail sales the first week of the game’s release.
Possibly true, but this time, it could be different. When Halo 3 was released, most of the silver screen’s offerings where pretty much crap. Now we have some really potentially great movies coming at the same time. Iron Man is one of them. It has a strong following even amongst gamers. If the movie is good, expect sales to be just the same whether or not GTA IV was there.