EA: Retail Not Threatened by Digital Distribution

Many love predicting how digital sales and downloads of video games will soon put traditional retail stores out of business, but EA European publishing manager Jes Uwe Intat doesn’t think retailers will be going anywhere anytime soon.

“I think there will still be a need for a physical distribution starter, and then services and additional content can be distributed online,” he said.

Intat noted that the ever-increasing size of games is also a major roadblock for digital distribution.

“We used to be below 1 GB, but we’re now building games that have 8, 9, 10 GB–and if broadband distribution is going to allow 10 GB to be distributed in half an hour, we’ll have games that are 100 GB,” he said. “Our software developers eat up storage space so much quicker than telcos can build distribution.”

Download-only games have become popular on consoles, with Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network hosting quite a few games that wouldn’t find retail space anywhere on the planet. Digital distribution platforms like Steam are also gaining, no pun intended, steam, but bandwidth and restrictions have become major roadblocks in popularizing the system.