Speaking at this year's Develop conference today, EA sports worldwide development lead Andrew Wilson said that game retailers are facing a serious disruptive challenge from on-demand digital content.
Despite the continued growth of the game market, fewer players are choosing to visit specialist retailers, instead turning to Facebook games and download services such as Steam, Xbox Live and PSN. 45 per cent of game revenues in 2010 were digital, according to Wilson.
He also drew attention to a shift away from paying for games in quantity, saying that shorter games and free titles are pulling players away from traditional retail purchases.
"There is still a business of $60 games sold at Game and GameStop - that's still legitimate for now," he said. "I won't predict when that will die. I won't prophesise 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.
"But the amount of people on Facebook, on PSN and Xbox Live is growing. There is a shift here. If we don't get ahead of it, we will find ourselves in trouble."
The aftermath of such troubles, he added, can already be seen in other sectors: "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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Source: MCV
Comments
4This isn't really news anymore since EA already showed their answer to both issues by launching Origin and investing in smaller games like Gattling Gears, etc. It's weird that the article doesn't even mention that.
There are two separate points here:
1. The move from traditional disc-based software to download only.
2. The talk of people moving away from larger games.
The first is inevitable. We'll have perhaps one more generation of disc based hardward. I can't really see it going far beyond that.
With regards to people wanting shorter titles, I think this is debatable. There will always be a market for epic-scale releases, but people's time and spending power is limited and ultimately they can only manage a few of these a year. Shorter titles are there as a change of pace and convenience. They complement one-another: like arthouse indi' films and summer blockbusters, it is possible to enjoy both.
Just like the movie industry is trying to push bluray when digital is the obvious future. Most movies come out digitally only to rent in HD as opposed to own in HD so you are forced to either own the SD crap version digitally or go buy the BD. You can't stop the future.
BD was the format that came along to just hold us over until people have the brains to figure out they don't need to put a disc into something to watch a movie. Just click on the screen to "watch now" and you get to watch the movie through the magic cable connected to your digital device.
To be honest, I'd have more appreciation for the fate of retailers if they didn't appear to kick the consumer quite so much. The local GameStation has a sale on - Dungeon Siege 3 (a game that's barely been out a month) is half price. £15 for a game that cost £30 not 2 weeks ago in the same store. Same for Brink (though that's been out a little longer?). I'd be gutted if I'd bought either game from them at top price. At least Amazon doesn't shove it in your face when they reduce games down that you've just bought.
Which makes me think of something. Amazon and Play (as examples) are very quiet about how much they benefit from games releases. I would venture to say that Game/GameStop etc are using digital downloads as an excuse, when really their profit margins are being hit by online retailers. Online retailers aren't mentioned at all in the above article, which makes me think. I doubt Amazon cares if every PC game has Steamworks, but strangely bricks-and-mortar stores do care about such things.