Hey Myllyrinne, feel free to go all digital whenever you feel like it. Trust me, nobody will miss your mediocre offerings taking up shelf space. And good luck getting those new platforms into homes that you want to write software for, without retail.

Sounds no more than "another" bitter CEO, after the failure of his overhyped product. Just how much DLC was HE incentivising customers with exactly? I'm sure the unfinished game selling for full price didn't worry him.

I don't know what you have been smoking Lee but Remedy are a great developer, Alan Wake is a highly under rated and extremely polished game. Not to mention Max Payne is one of the best games of its generation.

Also, you don't seem to comprehend how many middle men they are between the developer and retail. With the publisher taking the majority and developers generally making very little profit.

I agree with every point he makes and would even go to the extent of removing publishers from the picture. You could make a 20million dollor game (average AAA budget) and only need to sell 333,000 before turning a profit. Not only would we see a vast increase in creativity but also a more sustainable business. With the new generation of gaming expected to be even more costly its would be nice to finally have the books balance in the developers favour.

Not to mention the ability to get products faster to the market, with less clashing of title releases and better planning on release windows.

The list goes on... but I think I made my point.

The current distribution system is still hinging on an old and very outdated model. In this age, developers don't actually need Publishers or Retail to get their games out into the world - there are plenty of other ways to go about it.

Admittedly the marketing tactics that a publisher can employ do put the product in the consumers face, but that's not always a good thing. I, for one, am wary about titles published by certain publishers due to their previous conduct and my declining faith in them, so a game which may be fantastic but published by one of said publishers already has a black mark against it - hardly a beneficial thing.

Alternatively, a completely digital distribution method has its flaws as well. With titles being able to be released directly, and access to the consumer market far easier, Devs may pursue the dreaded Day One DLC model - i.e. we may see even less fully completed games on release than we do now.

My point is, the current structure of Dev>Publisher->Retail->Consumer is old, and in todays environment it is quite possible for the Dev->Consumer model to grow, and in fact may even be where we should focus, but it must be done smart. Developers will need to take full advantage of the freedoms granted when they don't have to push a game out every year, half cocked and buggy - good games take time.

There is nothing wrong with the Day One DLC model as long as the main game content is worth the value of it's asking price.

People seem to have it in their heads that they're getting ripped off but they're not. The DLC is paid for out of a different kitty than the main game and it shouldn't matter when it is released.

I'd like to see it more so a perfectly sensible practice becomes less taboo with the customer.

the current model is a bit outdated but it has worked well and it still works on majority of games. let me remind people that without the likes of Game a lot of the small companies will not survive. (companies that usually make unique products)

let me also remind people that the agressive nature of the retail market in UK is brining down prices which normally means within 6 months you would pay a much more reasonable price that the £30 and £50 rrp the developers / publishers smack on the games. if game go to digital this will not occur. so expect to pay full price for a long time before they even consider dropping the price

It all works perfectly.

Until you look at the stats and find that more than half of all game related profit is picked up at retail (Edge, May 2011). Those software sales also included service subscriptions and DLC content purchases. Take that out of the equation and nearly two-third of sales came at retail.

Let us not also forget about the availability of the digital market.

Pitifully, only 17 out of 50 countries in Europe are presently served by Live, as an example - and outside of the North American market, the rest of the world is even less represented.

Then there's the question of broadband infrastructure. Here in the UK, a significant part of the population (around 1/3rd of households?) is still operating on sub-1mb connections. How many of those customers are going to be downloading games, when it's going to take them fifty hours or more of constant download time to obtain?

Not many.

Im not entirely sure where he came up with digital being better for the consumer if im honest. As a general rule i have nothing against digital retail but 1: i do prefer to have a hard copy on my shelf with a nicely printed box(insert) and manual so i can always reinstall whenever i need to. 2: In many cases the cost of a digital version as opposed to a hard copy seems to actually be more for instance i just bought a brand cd/dvd new version of the latest Operation Flashpoint for £14 while on Steam it retails digitally for £29.99

It really doesn't matter what the Remedy CEO or any one person says about this. The fact is, these things are driven by consumer demand anyway.

If enough people want to buy games in retail stores there will be developers, publishers and stores willing to sell them.

Personally I prefer digital distribution. Steam is my first point of call for games but I know people who prefer having the nice box on the shelf. I respect that.

What I don't understand, at least here in Australia is the price difference. I can pay $45 on Steam vs $108 in a retail store for the same game. I mean seriously, what do they think is going to happen to the retail industry if they keep that up.

Zarfius, you make an excellent point. The costs involved with physical distribution boost prices by an almost absurd amount (when compared to the digital distribution model that is). Now, before anyone calls me on that, I realize that this may not be the case in all countries, after all the closer to the source you are the less you have to pay, but the fact that a game on release day can sometimes cost upward of twice its digital counterpart is simply ludicrous - and it's this climate in which digital distribution will be most effective, locations where the purchase of a physical copy is more expensive because of the extra few middlemen it has to pass through.

Careful what you wish for you could end up with a couple of giant app stores, the web high street only seems to room for a couple of super sites.

And cloud based games could mean a thin client (smart tablet/TV) is all that is needed to play amazing looking AAA games... and the same problem could arise only one or two very powerful providers!

The thousands of people who don't have broadband internet access, or are on networks with security who do not allow access to certain ports, protocols, or servers.

One large group of people, who play video games, and absolutely REQUIRE retail stores - is our U.S. Military. (We) can't just hook our consoles or personal equipment into the network, and download MB or worse GB worth of data to install and play a game, or even update a game. Most of the time we can't even play online unless we are on shore duty and at a station that doesn't drill us 24 hours a day.

I refuse to buy disks anymore, even if that means waiting an extra 6 months after release to get the game digitally. Let my dollar cast my vote for the future to draw closer to DLC only.

While I can understand the reason why Digital Distribution gets so much support I wish put forth some of my opinions against it being the sole distribution method.

Digital Distribution puts the money in most cases directly into the pocket of developers and as stated can help bring down the break-even point helping run a very sustainable business with reasonable expectations.

While Steam and a few others drive the prices down for certain titles compared to their Retail counterpart one must frankly understand that this too is a rip off in most of the cases as those prices should have been the price the games were selling at to begin with.
The Only reason we see so many discounts on Steam is because there aren't any overheads compared to Retail and this makes it very easy to fluctuate the price. The Developers don't mind this since they are still getting more than what they would have got in Retail.

Here is the thing.
-Considering the fact that Digital distribution Removes a lot of middle men, why doesn't the industry lower the prices of games rather than give discounts on them ?

-Taking into account that DLCs use Digital distrubtion largely over Retail whay are they so expensive? They are far more expensive than the game they are meant for if you compare them in terms of Content:Price

-What exactly then becomes the value of collectors editions if they are only Digitally distributed?

I am not an expert in this industry but I am taking from POV of a customer. Also undertand that while my points may seem incorrect when compred to specific examples I am talking in general. I started buying games when they used to sell them Retail only and I belive they carried more sentimental value this way. I know these are only "games" but I have always argued from the standpoint that games are a form of expression and ineffect an art form.

What I do believe is needed is a change in the Retail system.

Forgive me if the comments seem disorganised but the text box is very small.

I have no issue with digital distribution, in theory. I do however have issue with the arrogant assumption that everyone has access to high quality broadband, and if you don't.. tough.

I also have issue with the relatively heavyweight clients I'm forced to install in order to validate and run digital content. I still find that steam makes my system drag and it uses up bandwidth as it sees fit. I already have a validated and 100% working game on my local disk.. so why do I need to download gigabytes of data just to make it 'valid'?

Then there's the problem with bandwidth limits. In the UK the fair use policy still rears its ugly head, and with a lot of people, myself included, jumping on the mobile broadband game, there's actually financial penalties for going over the allowance.

It saddens me greatly that we are moving so far away from the times where we could plug a cartridge or CD into a machine and be playing away within seconds. Now you have to download, update, authenticate and all the other forced nonsense that basically means the time for actually playing games is being squeezed out.

“Maybe it’s not so good for retail, but then again if you’re selling our games as used copies and incentivising people to do that, then I don’t really feel sorry for you.”

Yeah but this is great for the consumer and it's the consumer that pays your fat wages. Idiot.