http://www.vg247.com/2009/07/14/former-xbox-manager-says-digital-distributions-neither-as-big-nor-as-significant-as-consoles/

David Edery, former worldwide games portfolio manager for Xbox Live Arcade, has said that “digital distribution is neither as big nor as significant [to game consoles] as it’s been cracked up to be,” and it does not have such a “long tail” as backers claim.

This means that popular titles keep getting more money, while others fade away. This is called “long-tail sales”, which is implied for games that start big, but not one with little exposure from launch.

“The hits get bigger, but the pool of money remains the same,” he said while speaking about the remake of Worms on XBLA being one of the highest selling games on the service.

Admitting that the game would not have sold as well through a retailer like Amazon, Edery stated that without an “Amazon-like recommendation engine, user ratings, ease of search and more dynamic pricing functionality allowing selective discounts and bundling, the long tail on digital download services will struggle to grow”, according to Gamasutra, and the “long tail” is incompatible with many multiplayer titles.

During his keynote speech at Develop, Edery cited NPD numbers stating that 18 percent of Xbox Live Gold members download content regularly, and only 10 percent of PSN users download free or paid content.

“The number of players in an ecosystem is crucial to a real-time multiplayer game’s success,” he said. “There are too many multiplayer games and too few players populating them. Why would a user buy a real-time multiplayer game from the long tail if they won’t have anyone else to play it with?”

Edery suggested that a viral invitation scheme would help with longevity, allowing players to invite friends to play a game for free, implementing a better matchmaking system with information, or to schedule playtimes for games like Microsoft is doing with 1vs. 100.

He has a very good point about multiplayer games. It will be interesting to see how they implement invites to play the game for free.

That's a turnaround from when Microsoft's XBLA manager was touting the long tail of XBLA games.

I disagree with his synopsis of the likelihood of long-tail games lacking a MP userbase. Although he is correct in saying this is an XBLA issue, why is this not a case with hard-copy retail games? And why has Steam done such a fantastic job on ensuring longevity with their long-tail games?

Seems like he's arguing that it can't happen, when it indeed has on other systems.

Thanks to Digital Distribution there are great games on the market, that would have never seen the day of light. And there are a couple of classics as well.

DD will grow in the next few years. People will get used to it, there will be a rating system and recommendations. I would love to see how often  some DLCs are sold...

For next years DD will be stronghold of niche gaming titles that wouldn't have chances otherwise. For a big scale replacement of retail games we need much better infrastructure and bandwidths.

I agree, we would never see a Castle Crashers, a BF1943 or a Shadow complex without DD.

It is only the beginning...

I rather have games on discs.

same

But i dont mind little small games like turtles in time and Street fighter HD remix.

But DD is so far off that my kids will prolly start using it. (m 23)

it's interesting that he mentions Worms, because Team17 switched to DD because it suits their budget

source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/xbla-publishing-massively-harder-now-brown

i really like DD but i strongly agree with the part about "“Amazon-like recommendation engine". it's been quite a while since i was on xbl but on psn most of the games have about zero information about them provided and i'm forced to use other sources like vgchartz/gametrailers to figure out what i want to buy. that's okay for me but not the mainstream.