14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts is confident that the days of regular, retail game distribution are numbered, as customers are losing interest in paying $60 for a boxed game and want them, alongside cheaper titles, to be offered digitally.
Game distribution is currently split between old, brick and mortar stores, like GameStop, and online distribution networks like Steam, the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live.
EA, one of the biggest companies that has embraced digital content delivery, is confident that gamers are soon going to prefer buying things online than going to the actual stores.
"People are no longer going into GameStop or GAME en masse and paying for content in a quantity," said Andrew Wilson, EA Sports senior vice president of worldwide development, via MCV.
"There is still a business of $60 games sold at GAME and GameStop - that's still legitimate for now. I won't predict when that will die. I won't prophesize when games on discs will go away, because the reality is that as long as gamers continue to line up and buy them we will make them. "
While EA does admit that $60 retail titles aren't going away anytime soon, the shift to digital delivery is happening and store chains, alongside developers or publishers, shouldn't fight it, lest they want to disappear.
"But the amount of people on Facebook, on PSN and Xbox Live is growing," he added. "There is a shift here. If we don't get ahead of it, we will find ourselves in trouble. We have seen the Blockbusters and the HMVs change before our eyes. The corporate graveyard is littered with companies, mediums and entities that resisted where the consumer wanted to go."
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