News GameStop: Digital distribution is not a threat

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/06/22/gamestop-digital-distribution-is-not-a-thre/1

US retail chain GameStop has claimed that digital distribution is not a major threat to bricks and mortar games stores.

 

Nice to know they've got their head firmly buried there.

I sort of hope they go down the **** pipes :/

 

I personally prefer a hard copy of a game, just something about the feel of the box, the manual the whole lot. But if digital sells it cheaper... then im going with digital

 

Hes not wrong, there will always be a place for Hard copies of games so in the UK shops like game and gamestation shouldnt be too worried about online distribution only services like steam ect, what they should be worried about however are the online only stores like play.com ect who regularly undercut their prices by £5-£10 or more. Sometimes I wonder if the only thing that keeps these stores afloat is the 2nd hand games market

 

They are partially correct.

Currently digital distribution is indeed no threat to the retail business for anything beyond music.

Games (Movies as well) are simply too big in filesize for the current infrastructure the internet is based on outside of Japan and about 3 select european countries.

Then add in the fact that often the price for digital distributed media is the same or higher than in retail and currently it does really not pose a threat.

However, once the Government and the Isps agree to who has to cough up the money to make widespread fiber to home reality digital distribution will take over.

 

Not every one Owns a $39-$89 600kb/s internet connection.
I certainly only have DSL 75kb/s and online distribution is taking days to weeks to download.

So i preferre a Hardcopy and install that and download the needed patch which takes about mins to hours.

Pretty sure most hardcore gamers do have fast internet but the other 50% casual and minor aged gamers will have slower connection, and will need hardcopy distribution.

 

It wil be years before digital distribution be comes the norm. So many people have crap connections (like me) to the internet that downloading would take several days to complete. 5,10,15 GBs of game at 60kbps is never going to happen. So it doesn't.

But even buying hard copies doesn't always mean a download free install. Half-Life 2 is the first game where I bought the dvd rom only to be shocked when i had to download most of the content from steam, and that was when i still had dial up. Even today on my broadband it takes 5/6 hours.

And what about kids, they can't buy online cos they don't carry plastic, so another barrier to digital distribution.

Digital distribution will only become king when people can use it, and I can't see that happening for at least a decade, and i'm only thinking of the UK.

 

Play.com & Steam.

My life is pure bliss without bricks and mortar.

 

id prefer a disc and box also tbh. Hard copy all the way. digital distro is useful but it wont blow away the hard copy for a while yet

 

For as many problems as steam has had and does have it did get one thing right and that is the distribution.

 

In other news Sterne Agee's Arvind Bhati was found with his head stuck in a hole in the ground loudly voicing the words "La la la I can't hear you."