That said, there's only a certain amount of time each person can spend on escapism. If gaming is occupying more of that space it is intrinsically encroaching on other forms of entertainment. Ebert is notorious for writing off the gaming industry, so I'm not surprised it wasn't mentioned in this article.
I'm not sure that profit is relevant here; you would have to look at revenue or (even better) head-counts of moviegoers. My understanding is that domestic (US) ticket sales peaked in 2002 at 1.58B while revenue continued to rise until 2009 due to rising ticket prices. Source:
Anyway, my original point was that if you assume aggregate leisure time has changed little over the last decade -- it's impossible to ignore competition from other entertainment activities vying for the same space -- especially when you've got absolutely meteoric growth in the gaming industry.
