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Game Retailers Facing Digital Distribution Transition
This editorial at Eurogamer examines how the games industry is dealing with the growth of digital distribution — a transition they're handling better than other entertainment industries, but not without a few stumbling blocks of their own.
"The examples from other industries undergoing this transition are not promising, since they tend largely to focus on metaphors involving creeks and a distinct lack of paddles. Bricks-and-mortar retailers of music and movies have largely sat back and grumbled while their businesses were hijacked, first by online retailers of physical product and then by digital distribution services. ... Specialist games retailers who follow that model face little more than a decline into insolvency in their medium-term futures. Worse again, they face competing with far bigger companies to retain their slice of an already shrinking pie — as boxed game retail sales fall off in favor of digital distribution, supermarket chains are increasingly seeing high profile games as a worthwhile loss-leaders."
Something tells me that it will be harder to download the game hardware itself. And yes, you can buy it online, but there is a huge "I want it NOW!" market that online and shipping will never satisfy. But the margins will have to come down on many things, and value (Expertise perhaps) will have to go up.
...I'm not buying.
The Digital download would have to really, really cheap (less than $10) to make it worthwhile for me to participate in this new economy. Why 10? Because oftentimes I buy a game on DVD for $20, play it, and then sell it used for $10-15, so my actual out-of-pocket cost for most games is less than $10 overall.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Two words: used games. You can't sell a digitally downloaded game back after you've played it. A game store will take a box title back. Though I guess if there were digital download rentals that would put another nail in the coffin.
That's probably some people, but most also don't care about it. For me it seems just a lot of work to get something like $10 back from it (and then you really lose the value you spend for buying the game because you dont have it anymore).
Digital downloads need to be loads cheaper because of the following reasons. They can't be: 1) Borrowed 2) Rented 3) Returned which means that if someone wants to buy a game, they have to get it straight from the publisher. Plus, our broadband infrastructure isn't really equipped to download GBs of data as the primary way of purchasing games. And then you have to factor in the cost of bandwidth that we'll probably pay for in one way or another and you begin to see that the real benefits are only for the publisher and not for consumers. I'll stick with discs, thank you very much!
Uggh. I've had some HORRIBLE experiences with digital distribution for games (EA Download Manager, Steam).
Give me a hard copy over digital any day.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Personally I believe that digital distribution will continue to grown. I have a 12mb internet line that is very affordable and have no qualms about buying games through steam or other such services (though predominantly I use steam). The games I have bought is in a nice list that makes me able to reinstall at a whim. Nothing being able to resell my games isn't really an issue for me since I didn't use to do that before anyway; however I can see how those that do that regularly could see this change in distribution method as a bad thing. Though I believe that for good or bad it is a change that is inevitable, if nothing else it will reduce resource consumption to a certain degree by eliminating a part of the packaging and shipping associated with traditional distribution.
These events have lead to many shops relying on the sale of entertainment distribution in various forms to close their doors, and will probably continue to do so. While this is no doubt a tragedy for those either making a living in that sector, or enjoy frequenting such establishments, it is inevitable fallout from our technological advance. It is not the first, nor the last I assume, time such a thing has happened.
The Long Now Foundation