Brett Favre takes on Hollywood.

Bear with me as I try and explain what I mean. Flipping around last week I came across the live release party for Madden 2009 on Spike TV. Warren Moon and a host of former players waiting on The Man himself, geek on the street interviews and such. It was 2009 Midnight MADdenness I tell you!

First, for the three people out there who aren’t familiar with it, the game has evolved from this crappy little Centipede-like vector figure thing 20 years ago to highlights and angles so realistic they look like a real NFL game. Even the dreaded ‘Madden curse’ has a new spin on it for 2009: Instead of the typical injury befalling anyone lucky enough to grace the cover, this year apparently, it causes you to end up on the Jets.)

(Hey kids, better hit Gamestop, etc., and snag all that Favre Packer-laden display merch so you can sell it later on eBay. The image above? Comes from Hollywood Video’s new releases booklet, which, I plan to hold on to, then sell in 20 years to help finance my nursing home stay. Of course, EA also has an updated version with Jets uniform.)

But watching the Spike thing, it also felt very much like, well, a video game now warrants movie premiere status? On second thought, that’s not a bad thing though. The movie industry is seeing increasing competition from the video game industry, not just in terms of titles to choose from, but how those titles are delivered.

I’ve bitched previously about how theatres seem to be on borrowed time. Even though eliminating movie theatres is not the main focus, it has to be part of the discussion in looking at how strong the growth of video games has become. Especially when you consider that since the 1940s, the percentage of those who go to the movies weekly has dropped from 60% to less than 10% now.

At first glance though, the numbers appear to be increasing. Mostly, they are. (Thanks to the current comic book craze, the industry is ‘reimagining’ anything it can get its hands on, not to mention the countless sequels those movies spawn.)

Thing is, so are the numbers for everything else competing for all that disposable income out there: video games, music downloads, DVD rentals and sales, etc. More choices, less time to enjoy them all. (In a way, it’s like Starbucks’ current situation. It’s not that they did anything wrong per se, it’s just that everyone else started offering the same ‘special’ coffee too—and offering it cheaper.)

Same with Hollywood: Everyone else caught up.

The video game industry reached $9.5 billion in sales last year, which matched film industry ticket sales. Which tripled video games sales only a decade earlier. Grand Theft Auto 4 alone made $500 million—its first week. This summer’s blockbuster Dark Knight? It still hasn’t reached that number in a month domestically.

From Pong to a multi-billion dollar industry, whodda thunk. Movies themselves aren’t going anywhere, but how and when we get to see them is definitely changing.

Fueling this is one thing the gaming industry seems to have going for it that Hollywood doesn’t: its distribution system isn’t dependent on a middleman to use it, i.e., games are played at home, so there’s no need to go to a central location to play, (unless it’s a tournament). Furthermore, there’s no need to spend a ton on snacks and drinks.

Kids either play alone or against others online. (And when they order their Domino’s at their friends house while playing Xbox, Domino’s or Coke ain’t marking stuff up 400% like the local mega-plex.) Concessions may make up the majority of profits for a theater, but how long before people wise up and decide $50-75 for a movie, snacks and babysitter just ain’t worth it? Hollywood might just consider doing away with theatrical releases and go straight to DVD rental/purchase/download.

The window for how movies are released has been shortening gradually anyway, why prolong it? Really, with all the different ways revenue is generated, from DVD sales and rentals, cable and TV rights, internet streaming, PPV, etc., are popcorn sales really the best way to distribute movies?

People have been conditioned for some time to wait for a movie in their Netflix cue or to “Own the DVD this Tuesday!” So is it that much of a leap for them to get those new releases without ever having to go to the movies again?

Notice also that the gaming demo is starting to mirror the Hollywood four quadrant audience demo: Men and women, young and old, (with the dividing line being around age 25.) Unless you’ve been stuck on the island with Wilson for a few years, the gamer demo is no longer just 13-year olds barricaded in their rooms for 12 hours at a time.

40% are women, with one-third of that number over 18, which doubles the number of male gamers 17 and under. Old school plays too: the number of gamers over 50 rose to 26% and continues to grow. Watch how many grandmothers start to use the Wii to work out with, if they haven’t already, while gramps throws down with the little ones in a nice game of HALO.

Or maybe they all sit around and watch Tomb Raider from Netflix.

(Images via and via.)