On November 8, a new game of Activision (the gaming giant), called “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” set a record of earning $750 million in its first five days of launch; making it the most successful launch of an entertainment product ever. Its unthinkable for some that the biggest money-making launch ever in entertainment industry is not a movie or a book; but a video game! Comparing it to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (which is the record breaking and most succesful movie launch of all time); the Harry Potter film earned only $169 million in its first weekend. Compare $750 million vs $169 million – and you can see who is clearly winning the war.

In the past two decades video gaming industry has off-loaded its small industry status and emerged as a $56 billion dollar industry. It has crossed newspaper, magazine and music in order to become the second biggest entertainment business; behind only movie. Now the movie numbers are inflated because it includes the DVD sales; which is driving the growth in film business. But even then, in a very short time video game industry has become three-fifth in size to the film industry and quickly closing that gap.

A lot has changed in gaming industry and the biggest strength of gaming industry is that unlike the other industries (Newspaper, music etc.) gaming industry embraced those changes and actually thrived on them. Going back, two launches probably shaped the industry future more than anything. One is the launch of Sony Playstation back in 1994 which made video gaming an extremely adult affair and no longer a matter of kids and nerds. The second would be the launch of Nintendo Wii which made video gaming popular among women also. Amazingly, the average age of gamers are now over 35 and a significant percentage of them are women (to some extent biased number due to mobile games like Angry Birds which is very popular among women). With these two mega events behind, the majority of growth in video gaming is coming either from online games like Farmville and World of Warcraft. Or they are coming from mobile games like Angry Birds, made by a finnish company called Rovio who houses only 55 employees. In a way, online and mobile is the future of gaming. Although gaming industry is still earning most of its money from selling console based games, the growth in future is coming from online and mobile.

The lesson to learn for modern marketer: Embrace change or get hammered by it. Also, the video gaming industry is an excellent example of staying one step ahead of consumer trends, cooking up awesome innovations, adjusting to the rapid pace of technology and preference and ensuring cool execution putting consumer at the center of everything.