14 DAY TRIAL // Sony is making more and more of a push into the world of online distribution. Its PSP Go completely lost the UMD cartridge and the company supports more and more the PlayStation Network and the PlayStation Store by making most of its content available through these two online services. As such, Sony feels the need to reassure gamers everywhere that physical releases are "not going away any time soon" and that it will continue to provide software support for them.
SCEE boss Andrew House talked to GI.biz and said that, "Make no mistake, when you're looking at PS3 games and you're seeing the shift in the sheer size of the data that's becoming available, the packaged media business is not going away any time soon." Most likely, he was referring to the increasing number of people that were getting used to the PS3's online capabilities and were easily becoming more accustomed to the PSN. As such, online distribution is seeing a steady increase in sales.
He tried to further explain the matter, but somewhere, somehow, things got a little bit mixed up. "I think there's been an overstatement there potentially, and then a backlash to that – but I don't think we were really responsible for that overstatement, so we're not really part and parcel of the backlash, if that makes sense." Well, to tell the truth, it's most likely that nobody made sense of that, but, since the first part of the statement concerning Sony continuing to support Blu-ray discs and UMD cartridges was very clear, we'll just assume that this was meant to enforce the company's position on the matter and leave it at that.
Probably, the main reason for which Sony isn't ready to go all out on online distribution lies in the cultural differences that exist between the large targeted continents. America has been very open to the thought of the simplistic and quick-delivery system of online purchases, and so has Europe, though at a significantly lower pace. Japan, on the other hand, isn't warming up to the concept as fast as the rest. Maybe it's because of its generally traditional view on things or just because most Japanese players tend to use their huge stacks of game packages and game cartridges as a symbol of pride, a collection, so the physical nature of their purchase is very important to them.