This is not the record for an opening week for a video game as Halo 2 did over $125 million dollars in sales the first day of its release according to Microsoft however it is the largest opening week for an EA Sports game. The relevance that these sales figures have to the Home Theater industry is that as game systems improve and move into the HDTV arena, they show that consumers are still willing to spend big money for first run video games. The value of the 2006 version of Madden of course has just plummeted on places like eBay this week but it shows that the concept of putting out highly anticipated “day and date” releases of theatrical movies in HD DVD and Blu-ray priced between $50 and $100 just might work. Consumers have a “gotta-have-it first” mentality and perhaps this could be a way for studios to translate the buzz of a new film into more software sales of that same title on HD DVD or Blu-ray.

The Sony PS3 will take videogames further into the home theater market as its Blu-ray drive based video game system will be able to do double duty as a gaming machine and a Blu-ray video disc player this November.