As the Hollywood writers strike continues into 2008, the video game industry anticipates that the lack of prime time television could motivate more people to pick up video game controllers instead of remotes. The WGA walkout, now in its eighth week, hasn’t been an issue for the gaming industry, since game publishers rely almost entirely on non-union talent. Only a handful of game writers are represented by the WGA, and they fall outside of the jurisdiction of the current strike. Game developers sometimes hire authors or screenwriters to pen the thousands of lines of dialogue players encounter in a game, and with most productions now on hold, the field of available talent is significantly broader than mere months ago.

Nielsen Media Research doesn’t yet count how many people play videogames across multiple platforms in the same way they calculate TV viewership, but research from the NPD Group, which measures gaming industry sales, says people are buying more gaming software and hardware than ever before. Sales of consoles, games and accessories hit 2.63 billion USD in November, up 52 percent from last year. Sales of games alone hit 1.3 billion USD in November, up 62 percent from last year, according to NPD.