Devoted to show business and the entertainment industry

With gaming being bigger than the Hollywood box office, they are starting to put on galas that are competing with all the red carpet hoopla that Hollywood puts on.

Microsoft has it own mantra as it always reminds the industry that their release of "Halo 2" was "the biggest day in entertainment history," as it sold $125 million games in a 24-hour period in November of 2004, beyond any movie ever released.

One of the responses to this surging market is that the gaming industry is starting to hold conferences of its own that bring together the movers and shakers to offer the opportunity of making connections, like Hollywood has done for years.

An example of this was the MI6 game marketing conference held at the Moscone Center this week in San Francisco. It was the fist of its type and reveals the growing power of the gaming industry.

Gaming is now bigger than movies and the separation is growing.

I posted a while back on the numbers:

"Video game revenues for 2005 were approximately $30 billion, and are predicted to explode to $65.9 billion by 2011. In comparison, total box office receipts worldwide were only $23 billion, down close to 8 percent from the year before, according to Nielsen Entertainment/NRG."

If they can figure out ways to go beyond their demographic and expand to larger portions of the population, Hollywood will become a footnote in comparison. It's already going that way.