IGN reports on some comments made by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick to attendees of a Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference about the idea that they could remove the cut-scenes from a game like StarCraft II and market them as a commercial movie. If that's not startling enough, then wait for the price point he mentioned, as he envisions selling such a "movie" for $20.00-$30.00. He says: "If we were to take that hour, or hour an a half, and take it out of the game and we were to go to our audiences, who we have their credit card information a direct relationship, and say to them 'Would you like to have the StarCraft movie?" Here's more:
My guess is unlike film studios that are really stuck with a model that goes through theatrical distribution and takes a signification amount of the profit away, if we were to go to an audience and say 'We have this great hour and a half of linear video that we'd like to make available to you at a $20 or $30 price point,' you'd have the biggest opening weekend of any film ever.
Within the next five years, you are likely to see us do that. It might be in a partnership with somebody or alone, but there will be a time where we'll capitalize on the relationship we have with our audience; deliver them something that is really extraordinary and let them consume it directly through us instead of theatrical distribution.
If we were to deliver a film digitally this way, I'd say an extremely high percentage would then go to the theater and watch it again.