While the streaming business led to a growth of the movie industry, pre Covid and pre strikes at least, it's difficult to compete when millions of people can produce good content for low prices.
On top of that, it doesn't help that movies stopped innovating, 2025 box office was entirely dominated by prequels and sequels.
I don't care about avengers, I really don't, the first bored me enough.
But it isn't. China and India are going gangbusters. Japan is thriving and doing strong work. Nigerian cinema is projected to hit 3 million ticket sales for the first time this year. The UK--is at least stealing work from Hollywood with tax breaks. Korea had a rough patch, which they turned around by doing more mid-market films.
The US studios problems are unique, which at least suggests that the answer lies in the failures of their leadership. Perhaps their long project of abandoning original mid-market films to push bloated huge special effects heavy franchises was ill-advised. It's almost Like having a portfolio of 10-20 reasonable original bets is better than investing everything in a single expensive "sure-thing" sequel it increasingly seems like no one actually wants to see.
So I agree that Hollywood has stopped innovating, but am dubious that any other problems has much to do with Youtube (as much as I enjoy YouTube).
I suspect the problem with AAA games is the same one movie studios face; mass-market appeal and profit-driven-design degrades the experience.
Indie / small studios have an infinitely easier time going to market than one would with making a film or especially a TV series.
You just make an account on a platform, sometimes submitting some additional information and paying a small fee, and that’s it. You may not even need actors like for text based games (Shovel Knight, Balatro etc)
Movies is so much more. And the cost of production is higher.
Also, the other big thing to realize is by far what games many people play is dominated by a handful of highly successful live service games. I have friends who only play Fortnite and have for a long time. They don’t play much else other than a few casual games when they take small breaks from Fortnite.
It’s not universal but there is a reason they’re always top of charts for revenue. Millions play every day.
The one other thing I’ll say is that seemingly unlike other media there is enough sufficient customer diversity that one business model doesn’t completely choke off all other types. Look at Expedition 33 for example
When I purchase a game, I generally don't have time to play it.
We are not the same.
This may be why gaming is a few multiples larger an industry than film.
With the high quality cameras and drones at approachable prices, it's amazing to watch individuals create videos at such high quality but also has a bit of that DIY vibe that makes it more relatable and enjoyable.
My current fav is watching 4X4 overlanding videos of people driving along some stunning landscapes.
If anything the substitute has been TV. Gaming is big, sure, but that doesn't appear to crowd out time reserved for watching media. I expect that the marathoner gamer who plays for hours daily is a comparatively smaller demographic.
I mean, the NFL, at root, is in the business of entertainment also, and it makes more than Hollywood as well all in.
But why would Hollywood care?
Which might be raised in relation to gaming as well, but I'd argue that gaming elements share much more in common with cinema, particularly in the contexts of world design, character development, backstory, and of course, CGI.
Not true. Most media conglomerates own both video game and movie production. The big players like Disney, Sony, Comcast, Universal, etc all have ownership stakes in video game companies and most TMT funds invest in both as a same bucket.
"Silicon Valley":
As more high-tech companies were established across San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley, and then north towards the Bay Area's two other major cities, San Francisco and Oakland, the term "Silicon Valley" came to have two definitions: a narrower geographic one, referring to Santa Clara County and southeastern San Mateo County, and a metonymical definition referring to high-tech businesses in the entire Bay Area.[citation needed] The name also became a global synonym for leading high-tech research and enterprises, and thus inspired similarly named locations, as well as research parks and technology centers with comparable structures all around the world.
To be fair, barely anyone (in global terms) watches the Super Bowl.
You are correct though - [0] claims 171M for TGA with [1] claiming 125M for the Superb Owl 2026.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_Awards_2025
[1] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...
According to Streams Charts, the ceremony peaked at 4.4 million concurrent viewers—the most in its history and a 9% increase from 2024—including 1.4 million viewers on the official YouTube broadcast (an 8% increase) and 1.8 million on Twitch. On YouTube, the ceremony peaked at 2.4 million total concurrent viewers (a 9% increase), including a record 8,600 co-streams.[6] More than 16,500 creators co-streamed on Twitch—a record for the show, representing a 50% yearly increase—with total unique viewers and hours watched each increasing 5% from 2024.[6][114] On Twitter, posts about the show increased by 12%, with more than 1.79 million posts from December 10–12, while the broadcast and related videos received over 60 million views.[6]
If we are ranking on streams however, does this take into account streams of parts of each media? For example streams of Bad Bunny's halftime show, streams of important plays, versus streams of individual awards being presented?
I don't actually care either way, much, since I don't like American football, don't generally like team sports, and don't spend time gaming, but somehow I think the comparison between the two in online streams throws the metrics off.
Partially, but a massive issue has been the offshoring of Hollywood [0].
UK, Canada, EU states like Ireland and Poland, and others match dollar-for-dollar in subsidizes to incentivize local production, and factoring in lower salaries are able to outcompete even Georgia.
After COVID and the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike, production completely left Hollywood.
Film production is high risk and expensive, so margins really matter, so the double whammy of the COVID shutdowns and then fhe WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike became existential.
California has been trying to reincentivize onshoring [1], but it's too little too late. Hollywood even lobbied the Trump admin [2] for a 100% tariff on foreign produced films [3] which more diversified media companies pushed back.
[0] - https://milkeninstitute.org/content-hub/research-and-reports...
[1] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/gavin-newsom-hollyw...
[2] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/hollywood-lobbying-...