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."

Comments

Re:And the hardware?

[lukas84]

I can get next-day shipping from several big online shops here. They have plenty of stock, too.

Whenever i go to a brick and mortar store, they usually sell outdated stuff (e.G. i needed a new graphics card, and was looking for a GT210 or something like that. the brick and mortar star only sold 8xxx Nvidia cards). I ordered it online, even though i actually was in three stores - none of them had any GT210.