14 DAY TRIAL // For quite some time, videogame industry figures have said that Steam and other digital distribution platforms were set to eat up market share from traditional retailers and that a trade war was brewing between the two camps.
It appears that rather than hurting sales of boxed copies of videogames, digital delivery is actually helping them by generating publicity and buzz for titles, through special offers and free-play weekends.
Doug Lombardi, who is the head of marketing for Valve, stated that “When we do our free weekends on Steam for our products we see an increase in player numbers, obviously, and then we'll see a spike in sales at the end of the weekend on Steam and at retail. And recently, we've seen data that shows Left 4 Dead free weekends increase the sales of Left 4 Dead on Steam, at retail and on the Xbox 360, which we would never have guessed could have happened, but it's just that word of mouth.”
Lombardi is also saying that there's no truth to the suggestion that big retail chains, especially GameStop, are refusing to give shelf space to those games that are receiving special attention on Steam. For example, Left 4 Dead, which is the latest Valve game released to retail, has sold more copies through GameStop than through any other retail chain, confirming the theory of the two distribution channels supporting themselves.
It seems that Valve can pretty much do no wrong, as Lombardi has also revealed that pre-order numbers for Left 4 Dead 2, which is set to arrive during fall, have overtaken those for the first game in the series, which is interesting especially given the backlash against Valve for working on a sequel while not delivering on the promised new content for the original release. The developer is still adamant that it will honor its promises made to those who bought the first Left 4 Dead game.