If there’s one certainty in the future of gaming, it’s that we’ll eventually move away from physical storage based mediums for cloud-based gaming and purchasing. It’s an inevitable future that’s on the horizon, and it’s one that EA is going towards with a gung-ho attitude, according to labels president Frank Gibeau.
Talking to GamesIndustry.Biz , Gibeau elaborated on how the publisher and developer was moving closer and closer towards ditching the physical for the digital, a move that the company feels should be implemented sooner, rather than later;
It’s in the near future. It’s coming. We have a clear line of sight on it and we’re excited about it. Retail is a great channel for us. We have great relationships with our partners there. At the same time, the ultimate relationship is the connection that we have with the gamer.
If the gamer wants to get the game through a digital download and that’s the best way for them to get it, that’s what we’re going to do. It has a lot of enhancements for our business. It allows us to keep more that we make. It allows us to do some really interesting things from a service level standpoint; we can be a lot more personalized with what we’re doing…
For us, the fastest growing segment of our business is clearly digital and clearly digital services and ultimately Electronic Arts, at some point in the future… we’re going to be a 100% digital company, period. It’s going to be there some day. It’s inevitable.
Well bully for them! I sure hope that they haven’t ballzed up on those stats, considering how EA has gone on record to call the industry standard measure of tracking sales, the NPD, a "misrepresentation of the entire industry,"
Still, while it makes sense for more developed nations to take advantage of their blisteringly fast broadband speeds, ditching the physical copy of a game in other countries would be financial suicide for EA.
But if it does become the standard for distribution, then perhaps other developers could follow suit and drop the highly inflated prices a few percentage points at the same time, hmmm?
Ah, one can dream…
Last Updated: July 3, 2012
