Digital downloads have proved popular, with movies, television shows and music proving there is a market for downloading online. But most studios have put off releasing digital downloads for games for a long time because they were worried that people wouldn't want to download large amounts of data and rather buy a physical copy.
But Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello, speaking at the Oragan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco last week, was pleased with the PS3 release of Mass Effect 2, which had both physical and digital releases on the same day. Read more about it after the jump!
The digital version of Mass Effect 2 for PlayStation 3, which was a 12GB download, was released the same day as the Blu-ray version.
"Sony had never done a day and day release," John Riccitiello said. "They were very cautious about their infrastructure so it was mostly a technology test." He talked about how EA did nothing to market the game, the digital copy was in a double-digit percentage of the PS3 sales of the game. Whilst EA hasn't released a figure, Riccitiello said it was "meaningful".
"This was really more about proving it can be done than it was proving what the opportunity would be," he added. "So an unmarketed game one year after the original was done on the Xbox and the PC, we released the PS3 and managed to do very, very well with it."
Personally, I have never downloaded a game released for both retail and digital release. I love the idea, but my Internet speeds (though whilst high and unlimited) prevent me and many other people. I think in the future, the idea will really hit off but until we all have unlimited high speed internet I doubt many people will warm to the idea. Still, it's nice seeing the idea hit off because it's really useful, rather than taking up space you can download, delete and re-download without any added price. I really hope developers aren't put off; I am really running out of room on my game shelves.
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