If dollars are your bottom line, the winner is clear: GTA IV sold $500 million worth of games in its first week, compared with Iron Man's take of just more than $100 million. Reduce that down to its lowest common denominator and GTA IV wins the game by a score of 5-1.

But hold on there. As some bloggers have pointed out, money isn't everything. At a price point of about $60 per game, video games don't reach as many people as motion pictures. So let's look at those figures.

Sure enough, Iron Man was viewed by 10 million people in its first weekend, compared with only 6 million owners of GTA IV. Reduce that down and Iron Man wins the contest by a score of 10-6.

Still, there's one statistic almost nobody's talking about: Time invested. A motion picture like Iron Man lasts about two hours, meaning that the 10 million people cooped up in a dark movie theater spent a combined 20 million hours watching the film.

Meanwhile, the 6 million owners of GTA IV spent much more than two hours apiece traipsing through the streets of Liberty City last week. They would have had to spend only a little more than three hours apiece to beat Iron Man's mark of 20 million hours of combined play. And based on what I've seen Ninjasistah alone play on the game, I'm betting most GTA IV players will spend many more hours -- even days or weeks -- playing it.

So I'm calling this one for GTA IV. Not only did they beat Iron Man in money earned, they also beat Iron Man in the only thing that's more valuable than money:

Time.