Sony executive Guy Longworth believes physical games may have a longer lifespan than some think.
The future is digital. So sayeth many within the industry. It’s an opinion that’s not without factual backing. Recent trends have begun to point more and more to a decline in the purchase of physical games, coupled with an increase in digital sales. It’s a future that some in the industry are clearly banking on. Microsoft, for instance, has made no bones about its intention to more heavily integrate digital content and capabilities into the Xbox One. Just recently, it was confirmed the company would be investing a whopping $700 million to expand on data facilities with the aim of furthering its cloud-bases services.
While Sony is no stranger to digital sales and has, in the past, invested its own heaping sums of money into things like cloud gaming for the PS4, the company plans to take a fairly balanced approach when it comes its reliance on digital distribution. “I think the reality is this,” said Guy Longworth, senior vice president in charge of PlayStation brand marketing for SCEA. “Our digital business is growing fast, and we have incredibly strong partnerships with our key retail partners as well. What we try to do is offer a relatively level playing field and let the gamers decide. We’re not trying to advantage them, we believe in consumer choice.” Longworth notes that presently, for many gamers, this choice leads them to traditional retailers. “It’s clear that the vast majority of the people want to go down to GameStop or Best Buy, they don’t want to buy it online right now. How that might change in the future is kind of hard to predict. People might be quite surprised, I think physical games will be around a lot longer than some people think.”
Source: Games Industry
