Remedy CEO Matias Myllyrinne wants the game industry to go all-digital as quickly as possible, and he doesn’t give a damn if retailers are left in the dust. They sell used games, so screw ’em, appears to be the general opinion.
“I don’t think the big, huge experiences are going anywhere, but the sooner we go digital as an industry, the better for everybody. Better for consumers, better for the developers and publishers,” he said. “Maybe [it’s] not so good for retail, but then again if you’re selling our games as used copies and incentivising people to do that, then I don’t really feel sorry for you.”
I’m sure most developers/publishers are literally salivating for the day they achieve total market control, but I’m not sure it’s a market that’ll survive if they insist on keeping the current price structure. As I’ve said before, $60 games are sustained by the secondhand game market.
Remove that, and a week in which Portal 2, Mortal Kombat and SOCOM 4 are released becomes a financially crippling prospect for most gamers — it’s hard enough for most of them already, and that’s with extra benefits like trade-in credit. With the current attitude that AAA publishers have, I only see an all-digital market benefiting the corporate, not the consumer, side.
