Speaking of the lessons learned from the release of Rockstar’s downloadable Grand Theft Auto episode, The Lost And Damned, Take-Two chief financial officer Ben Feder has declared that “retail is the channel for the foreseeable future.”

While The Lost and Damned eclipsed first-day revenue generated by all previous downloadable content on Xbox Live following its February 17 launch, and its downloadable follow-up, The Ballad Of Gay Tony, is expected to perform similarly well, that hasn’t stopped the publisher from announcing plans to release both pieces of Xbox 360 exclusive content on one disc at retail.

“I think one of the lessons that not just in this download but some other download experiences, it’s clear that retail is the channel for the foreseeable future,” Feder said on a third quarter earnings call. “Nonetheless, there is a download component to a lot of our games and there will continue to be a download component. The games live online and they live at retail, they live at both and whether that is download first, retail second/retail first, download second or some combination of the two, that’s an area that we are going to experiment with because we are innovating in that area and it’s likely to change from title to title, but everything is going to have a download component, needs to have a download component to it and this is kind of one of the key lessons…”



Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick also called the GTA DLC “a good piece of business” for the publisher.

Meanwhile, in an interview with USA Today, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser spoke of the advantages of traditional retail. "I know, as a consumer, I'm more comfortable buying songs, which are almost like playing a jukebox, than I am buying movies as purely digital items," he said. "We all feel that way, so we can surely get more people to experience it if we put it on a disc."

Source: Seeking Alpha