The media channel of marketing had changed a lot scine the invention of radio. Back to the old days, especially in the 20s and 40s radio was the only way for people to receive marketing message besided newspaper. They listened to all kinds of stuff, news, matches, and etc. But the effect of this kind of channel is really limited, because customers can only hear but they would have a hard time to visualize the product. Therefore it is hard to attract customers and provided them the motivation to purchase.
In the late 40s television was invented and it was proved to be a brand new form of communication channel between the marketers and consumers. Veiwers would spends hours and hours to watch television including boring advertisments. And many people no matter young or old would turn on the TV at once when they get off from work. Back then, companies were spending a lot of money creating new TV episodes, mives, all kinds of things that people could enjoy by watching TV. In the first time of human history, consumers can actually see what their products looks like and analyze the the function of the product through their eyes. People who wanted to buy cars can see how awesome their car looks like and its performance on the street. This new revolustion help marketers to attract customers much easier because they can visualize the products.
Though TV is still an important communication channel, it was not as important as it used to be. Right now, people spend way less time watching TV compares to other entertaining activities such as video games, movies, surfing the Internet and etc. Right now the gaming industry is proven to be the second largest entertaining industry just after movie. There are many video games that earn amazing profit within 24 hours.
Starcraft 2 which I personally play, and like it a lot, came out during July 2010. It was such a huge hit that many starcraft fans were lining up in front of the video store over night just to get the game. On the first day of its release, Blizzard sold one million starcraft 2 copies worldwide, and in the next two days, it sold additional 500,000 copies, and Blizzard sold a total 3 million worldwide in the first month. The game itself was sold for 65.99 before tax, therefore it is an approximately 198 million in revenue! There is not a single TV show can achieve this kind of revenue.
Starcraft 2 isn’t the only game which is make legends in the entertaining industry, other games such as Call of Duty Black Ops made the biggest hit ever in the entertaining industry, achieved a sale record of 650 million dollars in the first five days, and its sales had surpassed 1 billion by December 22nd.
In conclusion, the gaming industry is growing exponentially and it is earning more and more revenue as time goes by. I believe the movie and TV industries should work together with the gaming industry. For example they can make a TV episode about a popular game or make movies about the game. As the gaming industry is growing and they have more and more loyal customers, the marketers should consider video games as a new form of communication channel with their customers, also most of the buyers of video games are young adults they have not yet form a conisitence preference of a certain brand or company, therefore, video games is a great mothed to reach this kind of individuals, and build up trust and believe for these individuals.