Video games

I knew video games were big but I didn't realize how big. According to this article in the NYTimes, the FIFA Soccer franchise earned Electronic Arts over 1 billion dollars of revenue - that's comparable to what the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy will earn even though the latter is a far bigger cultural event. The average buyer of one of these games will spend 100 hours playing it so the cost per hour of entertainment time is less than a dollar which perhaps explains why the industry is growing rapidly.