Digital Distribution

Music may have been the pioneer media but it’s only a matter of time. The publishers have a thing or two to learn from RIAA before it will really take off, but soon enough Blu Ray and the brick and morter stores that depend on media sales will go the way of HD DVD (Best Buy or Game Stop anyone?).

Game Stop thinks this still over 5 years away, which might be true if publishers are as clueless as RIAA was. First thing they will have to figure out is pricing, both launch and extended life. If the publishers think they can get the same price from a download as from physical media, they have another thing coming. For one thing, I can resell games when I’m done with them and buy new ones. This lowers the overall cost of ownership. Much like how car manufacturers rely on trade ins to sell their new models. Without the trade in or resale, no one would buy a new car for 10 years or more. For the reason that I can’t resell, and if my machine fails I’ve lost my purchase, downloads have to cost less. Also, older games prices are reduced as time marches on as well as stores offering sales and incentives from time to time. For DD to work pricing needs to decrease over the life of a program.

There are other challenges, but no doubt DD is the way of the future. Game Stop’s assertion that it is at least 5 years a way is probably true, just because it’ll probably come with the next generation of gaming console.