Digital Distribution: The way of the future?

"Digital distribution (Also known as digital delivery and Electronic software distribution) is the principle of providing digital information and content over the Internet in the form of products or services." - Wiki

Digital distribution has been a vital part of this current generation of consoles, each home console boasts its own medium with which it sells content (wether this be full games, downloadable content. Etc.). Thus far these online transactions have been, for the most part, very successful as a stream of revenue for the respective platforms.

In my opinion the success story of this generation in terms of original game development and the reintroduction of titles from previous generations is undoubtably the Xbox360. Xbox Live Arcade boasts a variety of amazing titles both new and old and is the indie developers playground (although admittedly with certain limitations) for distributing their content to a mass market.

The success of Xbox Live Arcade and other digital means made me wonder wether or not the distribution of Full retail games will eventually follow suit and be distributed directly from an online store of sorts within the console itself. This would of course increase profits for the developers and producers of games as well as the parent company themselves but does raise several questions and effects:

• If certain titles were exclusively distributed this way through one medium only the companies involved would not be under any pressure to reduce prices due to the increased profit margins and lack of distributive competition.

• What of people who have no internet connection, should they be denied access to certain titles simply because of lacking access to the web?

• Advertising. If stores worldwide to not sell many of these titles then all advertising will have to be self imployed through the medium of television,print and the internet. This could cut harshly into the profits of a game and thus take away from the viability of this distributional method for many smaller companies.

• Gamespot and the pre-owned market. If eventually all content is distributed entirely through digital mediums then stores like Gamespot would go out of business costing thousands of jobs worldwide and further limiting the access of cheaper games to the public due to the subequent death of the pre-owned games market.

"Digital distribution (Also known as digital delivery and Electronic software distribution) is the principle of providing digital information and content over the Internet in the form of products or services." - Wiki

Digital distribution has been a vital part of this current generation of consoles, each home console boasts its own medium with which it sells content (wether this be full games, downloadable content. Etc.). Thus far these online transactions have been, for the most part, very successful as a stream of revenue for the respective platforms.

In my opinion the success story of this generation in terms of original game development and the reintroduction of titles from previous generations is undoubtably the Xbox360. Xbox Live Arcade boasts a variety of amazing titles both new and old and is the indie developers playground (although admittedly with certain limitations) for distributing their content to a mass market.

The success of Xbox Live Arcade and other digital means made me wonder wether or not the distribution of Full retail games will eventually follow suit and be distributed directly from an online store of sorts within the console itself. This would of course increase profits for the developers and producers of games as well as the parent company themselves but does raise several questions and effects:

• If certain titles were exclusively distributed this way through one medium only the companies involved would not be under any pressure to reduce prices due to the increased profit margins and lack of distributive competition.

• What of people who have no internet connection, should they be denied access to certain titles simply because of lacking access to the web?

• Advertising. If stores worldwide to not sell many of these titles then all advertising will have to be self imployed through the medium of television,print and the internet. This could cut harshly into the profits of a game and thus take away from the viability of this distributional method for many smaller companies.

• Gamespot and the pre-owned market. If eventually all content is distributed entirely through digital mediums then stores like Gamespot would go out of business costing thousands of jobs worldwide and further limiting the access of cheaper games to the public due to the subequent death of the pre-owned games market.

It definitely is, but it doesn't really feel like this "new" thing, its been happening for a while now. There will always be the people who want a actual thing to hold in their hands who won't do everything with DD, but for the most part it's one of the most popular things now.