Mass Effect 2 for PS3 Sold Great as a Digital Download

Mass Effect 2 on the PlayStation 3 managed to sell quite a lot of digital copies because it was offered as a day-and-date release alongside the regular, boxed retail version back in January.

Mass Effect 2 finally arrived on the PlayStation 3 after spending almost a year on the PC and Xbox 360 platforms, so Electronic Arts, its publisher, decided to do a few special things with it.

The game was launched in back in January in traditional brick and mortar game stores, but, unlike other console games these days, was also released onto the PlayStation Store as a digital download.

According to EA boss John Riccitiello, this was a testing stage for Sony's online infrastructure, as the Japanese company wasn't sure if its systems would withstand the 12GB download of Mass Effect 2.

"Sony had never done a day and day release," he said. "They were very cautious about their infrastructure so it was mostly a technology test. This was really more about proving it can be done than it was proving what the opportunity would be," he added. "So an unmarketed game one year after the original was done on the Xbox and the PC, we released the PS3 and managed to do very, very well with it."

While Riccitiello declined to give out any exact numbers, he went on to admit that the digital version of Mass Effect 2 made up a double-digit percent of total sales for the game on the PlayStation 3.

So, if the game was as successful as a day-and-date release, why isn't Sony or Microsoft adopting the same strategy for other new games? It all comes down to its retail policy, according to Riccitiello.

"They have got to manage both selling boxes at retail, and it's generally a pretty thin margin business," he explained. "And so they basically negotiate and leverage shelf space on the promise of making retail margin on software."

While the PlayStation Network only has a few full game downloads, Microsoft has added quite a lot of titles to its Games on Demand system, albeit all of them are available for download after quite a lot of months since their retail release.