While I'm not particularly thrilled that Nikki Finke used my reporting that "GTA IV" will earn $400 million in its opening week without citing or linking to me, and I definitely don't like seeing an ill informed journalist referring to the game as "loathsome." (I'm going to go out on a limb here and say Ms. Finke was not among the small number of journalist who have gotten to play some of the game. I'd also guess she's never played any of the "Grand Theft Auto" games. As someone who has spent a few hours with "GTA IV" and did play the past ones, I think it's ridiculous and offensive to call the game "loathsome." But whatever...)

However, for anyone out there who still believes the canard that the videogame business is bigger than the film industry -- hopefully none of the wise readers of The Cut Scene -- I recommend the little column she ran by former ICM and currently independent videogames agent Keith Boesky.

Here's the most important point to me, one that drives me crazy when others ignore it:

Game revenues are in fact larger, but they are only larger because we charge 6 times as much per consumer. The elephant standing in the room next to this statement is the actual market is significantly smaller. Especially when you consider NPD's number includes hardware sales which are between $250 and $600 per box. This would be the same as counting DVD players in home video sales - which, incidentally, without DVD players are larger than the game market.

It's definitely significant when a game like "GTA IV" debuts to $400 million in gross sales. And it's cool to point out that it's up there with the biggest box office bows. But those are very different businesses and given the multiple windows for movies, it's no basis for claiming that videogames are bigger than, or even close, the size of the film biz.