| Ka-pi96 said: That sounds like a good thing. More companies willing to invest in the game industry and publish games, especially those that are willing to let devs keep the property rights themselves is definitely a good thing. Gamestop though? How's that going to work? Aren't they one of the biggest fans of retailer exclusive stuff? Could these games they're publishing end up being sold exclusively in Gamestop stores or something? |
you need to read in between the lines.
First note that these things don't just start overnight. We may be hearing confirmation now, but this started in some conference room probably over 2/3 years ago.
What this is is GameStop taking note of something that's brewing in the industry and trying to get ahead of it early before they become irrelevant. The move to digital distribution. Right now digital distribution probably makes under 30% of console game sales. That's a pretty big number considering that only 3 years ago it probably didn't account for up to 10% of sales.
Any exec worth half a brain will see that that number is only gonna grow. And I dare say that by the time the next generation comes along, digital distribution will be the primary form of game distribution. It could be so far along that any of the big three will most likely even make those that want to use a disc pay a premium for a console SKU that comes with a disc drive. We could even start seeing games release digitally first then on disc a fee weeks later.
GameStop knows this, (all this already happened in the PC market) so the best way for them to circumvent this trend is to become a content creator themselves.
