Don’t Buy Digital? You’re Halting Progress
“A lot of our consumers don’t own credit cards. A lot of our consumers are still afraid of what happened to the PlayStation Network when 77 million accounts were accessed by Anonymous in 2011.
A lot of our consumers prefer to go into retail, buy those Xbox Live or PlayStation Network cards, and retail gets a very strong margin on that. For retail, if they can evolve to be not just a physical media purveyor, but a digital media purveyor, it’ll play a very strong role in our business going forward.”
-EA’s Chief Operating Officer, Peter Moore
It’s interesting to hear that the consensus between video game publishers and developers is that digital distribution is the market’s next evolution; a model they all seem to believe can take over the business space as soon as tomorrow, but they shake their fists at those pesky brick n’ mortar retailers stuck in the past as well as those silly analog consumers afraid of change, blaming both parties for impeding the wave of the future.
Forget about the fact companies like EA fail to present a competitive pricing structure for their digital downloads (as pointed out in this article), and that they always like to fuck us hard enough to shake the change out of our pockets with monetary schemes the likes of the ever contemptuous day one DLC.
Moore himself seemed plum tickled at Mass Effect 3’s padded numbers thanks to at-release DLC, “we saw a 40% attach rate that first week to DLC at GameStop in the United States. Not only are you selling a $60 game … you’re selling $20 DLC, so the sale becomes $80." Mr. Moore, if you’d like consumers and retailers alike to step out of the past, it’s time to leave behind your gleeful, ‘80’s businessman-esque greed behind as well.