PlayStation Network Senior Director Susan Panico has been chatting to analysts about the general idea of downloadable content and full games.
She mentions
“One of the things we found, though, was that the Blu-ray disc experience for marquee games like that [LittleBigPlanet] currently just work better because the consumer wants to go in and get that physical product,”
Now I personally have never felt that buying a game was an experience worth repeating unless I absolutely have to and would much rather be offered the option to download the full retail game for cheaper than I can pick it up in the stores for. Believe it or not I don’t want the manual and spam marketing with my game.
She also goes on to mention
“There’s also there’s also retailer relationships that we’re really sensitive to,”
“and making sure that we’re balancing those with the digital distribution content. It’s something we’re continually looking at on a title-by-title basis”
Now that makes more sense, I am pretty sure that the retailers would very quickly stop supporting the PS3 if all the games became available to download directly from the PSN.. For this reason alone I suspect we will never see downloadable retail games becoming the norm.
Source: 1UP
Last Updated: March 12, 2009
ewie
March 12, 2009 at 09:09
It will just be a matter of time before this start happening, but I think only 20 % of game sales will initially be this way. The stores will still sell
consoles and the games because it will still be a
stream of income for them and resellers will still profit, Just look at steam with all the specials
and the way it impact sales of titles, if say Microsoft can put Halo3 as a direct download and have a 1 week special. They could sell thousand additional games
quickly. I for one would buy a few games like this,
XBLA is a wonderful service and already do it – I have 60 games bought there already.
And the same will hold for PSN.
shops still sell the xbox 360 even though you can buy tv series and rent movies with it.
Retail stores will just have to adapt or face closure.
PaasHaas
March 12, 2009 at 10:12
Allot of people also prefer a physical copy because if you are done or dont like the game you can trade it.
I would have been so pissed if I was stuck with certain games that I didnt really like at all…
Makes buying new games quite a gamble imo
Ace
March 12, 2009 at 10:13
I managed to get the burnout paradise ultimate box online. It really preferred it for some reason. Also with the PS3 you can share your games with 5 different people (re-downloads). Thus the download cost can be shared…
It was also on special on the US store so it was only $20 (R210ish).
Banana Hammock
March 12, 2009 at 12:45
I love walking into a shop and getting a brand new sealed game, much better than a 5 hour download that’s for sure.
Then i can trade it too. The world can keep digital distribution, i want physical media thanks.
kab123
March 12, 2009 at 16:41
Well as a person living in RSA, it takes me 10 mins from work to pick up a game from BT. How long does it take to download 6 gigs?