Just when exactly will the games industry rely more on digital downloads than retail? According to EMA boss Bo Anderson, it won't happen for at least 6-7 years.
by James Brightman on Wednesday, December 03, 2008
There's no denying that digital distribution has made great strides in the last couple years. With Valve's Steam, Microsoft's Xbox Live, Sony's PlayStation Network and other services grabbing mindshare (and dollars), digital downloads have become a greater part of the game business. That said, the vast majority of video game sales today are still at retail.
Bo Andersen, President and CEO of the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA), doesn't expect that to change anytime soon. "Digital distribution certainly will be a significant part of the entertainment industry in the future, but our predictions are that packaged media will continue to dominate the home video sector until 2015 at least," he said as the EMA was welcome by the Content Delivery and Storage Association (CDSA) and MEDIA-TECH Association (MTA) as a co-producer on "The Future of Packaged Media '09," which will be presented February 3-4, 2009 at the Hilton Los Angeles in Universal City, CA.
"We are pleased that, as the trade association for the retailing of DVDs and video games, we can help bring the perspectives of the retail sector to this important conversation on how to maximize the sales and profitability of packaged entertainment over the next decade," Anderson added.
Earlier this fall, GameStop CEO Dan DeMatteo told GameDaily BIZ in an exclusive interview that he doesn't think digital distribution will become a major factor for the next dozen years or more. "...the bandwidth, etc., our studies have concluded that the network won't be in place to do digital distribution of full games until 2020 to 2025. And that's using today's size, but as consoles get more powerful, games get bigger. Right now, a 30GB game with your best T1 line is about 72 hours to do it," he stated.
via GameDaily
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