News Dutch retailer boycotts PSPgo

Errrr £200+ for a handheld, I dont think so, £150 for a handheld is a lot but £200 is just way over the top

 

Microsoft have indeed started doing that, but with two very important caveats; they're all old games and also priced highly as to not undercut retailers.

Microsoft is very much testing the waters, so-to speak, with digital downloads. On one hand selling games directly to the public is a no-brainer from a profit point of view (and gamers love it, just look at Steam for example), on the other they really don't want to piss of retailers while in the middle of a console war with Sony.

From what I understand, massive chains like GAME make £5-10 per console sale, which is peanuts if you consider the logistics of transporting, stocking and moving consoles. If retailers cannot carve out a profit from selling games, then the amount of shelf space dedicated to the console will suffer. Remember, it's the massive chains that are responsible for selling the majority of the console hardware.

Bill Gates said a few years ago that he believes the next generation of consoles will not use any form of disk, opting instead for pure digital distribution. While I think his estimate is 1 or 2 console generations off, his point still, ultimately, stands.

With the costs of producing current gen games rising astronomically and bandwidth costs becoming (relatively) trivial, digital distribution allows more money to go to the right people while at the same time cutting down on casual piracy and second hand games. I bet publishers cannot wait.

Sorry game retailers, we have some fond memories and shared some good times together but your goose is cooked.

 

Digital consoles for next generation, IMHO - purely because this generation is going on so much longer than anyone expected thanks to the recession and Wii.

 

I love it, People moaning about UMD and say the PSP should go digital distribution. THey do this and people moan about it saying retailers are loosing out lol.

Should retailers boycott the Iphone because they cant make money on any games or apps as they are all download only. Shoudl retailers boycott Microsoft products because digital distribution has been their aim for the last couple of years. Sony will fail with the PSP go becuase of the price point, its too expensive and the downloads cost more than retail UMD. So if you buy a Go your loosing alot of money.

I think people are also forgetting that its got 16GB internal memory. 16GB Duo/M2 cards are £60 alone so taking that off make the PSP-Go £140+. The PSP-Go is not much more tha a £200 16GB Ipod Touch which is its competition.

 

Digital distro is the future, I'd much rather have all my games avail to download than on disk. Just look at iPhone it's passed some big sales target rEcently, there will also be no 2 nd hand Market for the console + retailers arnt even selling the games. To me retailers are worrried they se digital distro as a big threat, biggest issue in the uk is lack of fast ingternet but. That will change before long

 

I wouldnt say people are moaning about it, more pointing out that what initially looked to be a claver business plan has become a rather daft one.

There are only 2 retailers of the iPhone; Apple, who make money long term off the digital downloads and O2 who make money long term off the contracts (this is of course ignoring the likes of carphone warehouse who are essentially O2 distributors. Sony on the other hand have a large number of retailers who have no long term income per console sold. For every xbox sold the retailers (between them all) can expect at least 5 game sales, for every PSPgo they can expect nothing more than a few accessories. For them once the initial profit from the console has been taken thats it for that customer, it wont interest stores at all.

 

its the future though ninja

and they will have to deal with it