Clive Davis, president of Arista Records, wrote an editorial in Billboard in 1982 titled, “You Can’t Hum A Video Game.” The article was in response to a growing fear in the music industry that video games would render music obsolete. Davis refuted this argument, and was mostly right in saying that the music industry would not be hurt by video games, but he was wrong in his title, as three years later, “Super Mario Bros'” was released and made history with its iconic music and sounds.
The paper above was written by a Yale student in 1999, and includes many interesting facts about the rise of video games and their music. Written around the time in which “Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time” was released (1998), the paper offers an interesting point of view during the time of the first solid video game scores.
In present day, some video game scores can be as involved as movie scores, but have they crossed the gap and become “stand alone” music, capable of competing in the music industry? Many movies release their soundtracks, and generate large amounts of profit from it, could video games start doing this in a big way? Blizzard is already starting to release soundtracks for their games, and the Halo franchise has generated a lot of buzz, the soundtrack for Halo 3 is the highest grossing video game soundtrack on Itunes.
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/121994,best-video-game-soundtracks.aspx