EA thinks that it is inevitable that it will one day become a 100 percent digital company, according to EA Games president Frank Gibeau. The executive believes that the monthly sales data that hits the wires each month is “irrelevant” during this transition, he said in a recent interview with Games Industry International.
When speaking about the digital delivery revolution for games, Gibeau says “If the gamer wants to get the game through a digital download and that’s the best way for them to get it, that’s what we’re going to do. It has a lot of enhancements for our business. It allows us to keep more that we make. It allows us to do some really interesting things from a service level standpoint; we can be a lot more personalized with what we’re doing.”
“We’ll continue to deliver games in whatever media formats make sense and as one ebbs and one starts to flow, we’ll go in that direction. For us, the fastest growing segment of our business is clearly digital and clearly digital services and ultimately, Electronic Arts, at some point in the future…we’re going to be a 100 percent digital company, period. It’s going to be there some day, it’s inevitable.”
Month in and month out journalists reflect on the state of the gaming industry by examining sales data from the NPD. Right now, NPD doesn’t factor in the burgeoning digital marketplaces like Origin, Steam, Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network.
Published: Jul 2, 2012 01:22 pm