With GAME Group recently experiencing difficulties and having to be bailed out and HMV struggling with sales, are retail commercial properties that sell video games reaching the end of the line?
Vice President, Patrick Soderlund of Electronic Arts (EA), a leading producer of video games has warned that retailers selling video games could be extinct in a decade as the digital market continues to boom.
Mr Soderlund told Computer And Video Games (CVG): “We know that packaged goods work today, and the majority of our current revenue comes from that.
“That’s still a viable business model. But in the long term we’ll see more and more people gravitate to downloaded content”.
EA is responsible for some of the biggest games on the market, including: FIFA, The Sims, Battlefield, Medal of Honour and Need for Speed, to name just a few.
But with more people buying games online and the with internet speeds getting quicker, buying games could follow the same route as music sales. People will still have the choice to own a physical copy of a disc to add to their collection, but many people may choose to simply download the game they want instead – enabling them to play within minutes rather than days waiting for it to be delivered.
Speaking of when Mr Soderlund thought games would make the transition from physical to downloadable, he said: “I think it’s going to be sooner than people think. I think it’s going to be sooner than ten years.
“I still want physical content but I’m not part of the new generation of gamers. I remember a time when I bought a cartridge and excitedly read the manual on my way home, imagining what the game was going to be like. Maybe kids don’t have that anymore.”
Do you prefer to own a physical copy of game, or would you be happy to download games instead?
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