An industry set on instant replay

It had a Hollywood smash-hit kind of opening day, with about $50 million in sales -- and that was after racking up $75 million in pre-sales. It was the source of late-night lines of eager fans, Internet piracy and merchandising tie-ins.

But long-delayed “Halo 2” was not a blockbuster movie -- it was one of the most hotly anticipated video game releases of all time.

And “Halo 2” shares another important attribute with many Hollywood hits: Like an ever-growing number of major new video games, it’s a sequel. In fact, this holiday shopping season it’s hard to find a new, big-budget game that isn’t a follow-up.

“The video game industry has a major case of sequel-itis right now,” says video game analyst Michael Pachter, “and it’s not going away for a while.”

Of the top 20 bestselling titles, according to the most recent NPD research group survey, only one -- “Fable,” by legendary game designer Peter Molyneux -- was an original.

Otherwise, the list was made up of titles from well-established series such as “Madden NFL,” “Tiger Woods PGA” and “Star Wars.” Indeed, when “Knights of the Old Republic: The Sith Lords” comes out next month, it will be the third “Star Wars” game released in 2004.

Other new or about-to-be released games that are sequels: “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” “Half-Life 2,” “Gran Turismo 4,” “Metroid Prime 2,” “Metal of Honor: Pacific Assault” and “Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.”

“The perception sometimes is that sequels are by definition exploitive and uncreative,” says Doug Lowenstein, president of the Educational Software Assn., the major trade group for the video game industry. “They are looked upon as simply a way to get the same people together and capitalize on the fact they did well the first time around.

“But like in Hollywood, that’s not always true.”

For game creators, a sequel can provide the chance to revisit and explore new possibilities within a world that might have taken years to design.

“When you create a great universe, whether it’s ours or ‘Half-Life,’ you don’t want to just stop with the first game,” says Pete Parsons, executive producer of “Halo 2.”

“We felt we had more stories to tell.”

Lowenstein says that even the “Grand Theft Auto” series, reviled as it is for its graphic violence, can demonstrate how a game can evolve over the course of sequels.

The first two “GTA” games were largely unknown outside a niche audience. It was not until the third title in the series, “Vice City” in 2002, that the creators of the game took a huge, influential step forward in their use of technology. “It was a major breakthrough in game design, the first time the player could roam around virtually everywhere in a virtual world,” Lowenstein says.

Sequel status does not guarantee success. While the initial entries in the “Tomb Raider” game series were big hits, the later entries “fell off a cliff,” Lowenstein said, largely because they depended on a tired formula. (Coincidently, the 2001 movie “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” based on the game, was a box-office hit. The 2003 sequel, “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life,” bombed).

Good or bad, the trend toward sequels in the video game industry is a sign of its growing maturity -- and of how it involves big money. The era when a few individuals could create a commercially viable game in a basement seems a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

Although Microsoft Corp., whose Bungie studio created “Halo 2,” won’t say how much it cost, industry insiders have estimated between $20 million and $30 million.

“It’s a lot easier to get the money to produce a game if it’s a proven property,” Pachter says. To a fault, perhaps. Even Lowenstein has warned that reliance on sequels could go too far.

“We need to be really concerned about our ability to continue to innovate,” Lowenstein says. “We have to be careful that we don’t get risk aversive.

“What makes games exciting for people is that we push the envelope of creativity.”

The dearth of original titles will probably not be relieved even partially until the major game consoles -- GameCube, PlayStation and Xbox -- are updated, and that could be a while. No release dates for the next generation of these machines have been announced, but the debut of new consoles is usually accompanied by numerous original games -- to promote the new machines if nothing else.

Lowenstein is looking forward to it. “Gamers are a pretty discerning lot,” he said. “Any notion that they will be satisfied with the same old, same old is just not the case.”