EA CEO says digital gaming sales will overtake console numbers next year
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted December 2nd 2009 5:23PM
posted December 2nd 2009 5:23PM
He went on to say that if EA's digital arm was a standalone company, "it would be like the darling of Wall Street." Of course, he's not just talking about XBLA and the App Store -- this is an all-encompassing view of the digital market, including casual gaming, Facebook apps, and WoW transactions as well. It may not be the kind of all-encompassing push needed, but we are hoping this sort of noise rattles the industry enough to mobilize smarter, more centralized methods of online distribution."When people think of games, they traditionally think, in the U.S., of what sells on the Xbox, the PlayStation, and the Wii, and they forget about all these online services that are out there... if you add all that stuff up, it's almost half the industry now. It's about 40 to 45 percent. Next year it's likely to be the larger share of the total industry and it'll be bigger than the console games all put together."
I much rather pick up a physical disc then download off Xbox Live.
I know I'm not alone.
@thrash1256 *than
You're not. Many games in my collection are hand me downs, and many games from my collection have gone to friends. I would hate to lose the ability to share. Sharing is caring!
@EGOvoruhk
Pass the dutchie from the left hand side...
@thrash1256
It's not surprising to see this. We have been downloading media since the late 90s. Remember IRC, Napster, Kaza, to bit torrent. Digital Gaming is inevitable. Streaming game is the future.
@thrash1256
I agree with you...I dont want to start download games (even thought I do sometimes through STEAM) instead of a physical disk. One reason is because ISPs have been testing putting limits on thier consumers, so where would that leave us if we download many games a month. Also, I dont want to wait for the damn thing to download, my internet speeds pretty fast but still...i would rather go out and purchase a disk and put it in and play!
@thrash1256
You are very much not alone, while I love digital content as far as add-ons go, it isnt the solution for Games themselves. Especially larger games when we have ISPs placing caps on data transfers.
Physical Media is going to be around for quite some time in my opinion, while digital is great like I said, it is by no means in the position to replace physical media. When it takes less time to go to the store 15 miles away, pick up a physical copy and come home and pop it in than it takes to download and install a 1Gb demo we have problems, and that is on the fastest internet availiable in my area.
Not to mention ISPs implmeting transfer restrictions, It would suck to have to manage your data transfers all for a game launch each month. It's just another old guy trying to think he is staying up with the times, but young people are obsessed with shiny things, and downloads aren't nearly as shiny as the back of a bluray disc or that shiny green on a 360 case.
@thrash1256
doubt that physical media will ever go away as bandwidth costs can get pretty expensive, i.e. playforsure didn't last for long. what happens when EA does go bellyup???
@thrash1256 Mixed feelings. I loved Steam when I moved around a lot in college - had nowhere to put my discs and had to move them all the time. Now that I'm sedimentary again, physical media has its advantages.
@thrash1256 Physical disks and CD codes area easily damaged and lost, and an online account is far easier to manage and maintain up to date, and I prefer that copy protection to CD checks and secuROM.
@YpoCaramel
LOL! I think you meant "sedentary". *facepalm* :D
@ (Unverified)
You don't get much more "sedentary" than "sedimentary" :-)
Not really shocking that a company who wants to sell something at a higher profit by removing one of the middle men would say he sees that middle man being removed in the not so distant future.
Very cute JR, but it ain't gonna happen for at least a few more years. A for effort though.
Ha, that's because you're afraid your Xbox is going to die at a moments notice.
You realize that going to a store and picking up a piece of plastic is less convenient right?
Or do you just not have a credit card?
@(Unverified)
I think it would be more inconvenient/take longer for me to download a 50gb game than to run to the nearest store and buy it. Not to mention if you live in an area with a cable company putting caps on bandwidth, it could become much pricier for the consumer indirectly.
And as a PS3 owner, I too prefer owning a physical disc as opposed to only a digital copy--it it isn't just 360 owners.
Still feeling smug there slick?
@Rick James
Yeah. the future is digital distribution. waiting for bandwidth? who cares. let's pretend for a moment that we're talking about video games here and not crack cocaine.
the point is convenience, not calculating the minutes it will take to get your gaming fix.
@(Unverified)
I would still talk about convenience. I have multiple places to stop on the way home from work to pick up a video game that takes up a couple minutes. That is actually more convenient than waiting for downloads especially when we are talking about limited time for gaming.
Some people may have a certain window of opportunity for play time. What if that is right after work for an hour and they wanted to play a new game? It's way more convenient for me to take 3 minutes to hit any one of the numerous stores on the way home from work than it is to go home... start a download and hope there is enough time left to even play.
Sure... I could download it then wait until tomorrow to play, but that isn't very convenient to me or many others out there.
I bet I'm going to make a killing selling all my *analog* games on Ebay.
???
@Spiny Norman
I know, right. Glossary check.
Looks like an emo CEO.
@Burke Hamblin
Steve Carell's next role: The 40 year-old CEO.
@John Riccitiello
Umm, remember I left my bag of 'sugar' at your house?
Well the rather depressing remnant of the PC gaming section in any GameStop shows that at least one gaming platform is already download driven. That and my getting-ridiculous Steam My Games tab.
@SeanG Well, I buy all my games via physical media. That way, they are good, even if the online distributor tanks. That being said, ANY kind of DRM on physical media I ABHOR. If I bought the game, let me play. I'm looking at YOU Spore.
I love the screenshot, he's facing tough time, EA sucks.
Hey John, too many late nights spent testing games?
Title of post is very misleading and takes Riccitiello's words out of context.
Most people will assume from the title that he means that next year games will all be digital downloads, when that's not at all what he's saying.
I love Steam. Soo....
@aaronaaron: I can already see Steam having an iTunes like interface and when you connect a device you can transfer games onto it just like music.
STEAM.
@(Unverified)
... is awesome. Valve had the foresight to do this years ago.
Go away EA... everything you touch seems to turn to dust.
@(Unverified) Steam = Win. EA = Fail (at least most recently...)
@(Unverified) is FTW! :D
Joshua, I wonder if your headline and description could be written a bit more clearly? You refer to "digital gaming" and "all digital".... since when have computer and video games NOT been digital? They've ALWAYS been digital! Computer/video games are by nature digital, using patterns of 1s and 0s to communicate information which then becomes all the components of the games we play. What the CEO above is referring too is on-line sales, services and downloads. Perhaps you might change your headline and article to reflect that?
that face screams "I'm here to screw over as many people as possible."
from EA, this message is not surprising.
Ofcourse the handheld market is bigger. And comparatively digital games are cheaper.
That doesn't mean there is no future for gaming consoles. We can not compare the game play experience between digitial games and console games.
All I know is that I only buy games when Steam has a sale.
Console Market ...Right.
This isn't going to happen anytime soon until internet speeds get faster and download caps disappear. With PS3 games on blu-ray media now, downloading games just isn't feasable until the restrictions on mainstream internet capacity stops, or gets a whole lot cheaper. plus even now, downloading games from steam can take a while on a standard connection, even to the point where its quicker to go to the shops and buy the DVD disk. In addition but until digital downloads become cheaper i'd rather purchase the physical media so i have a tangible product anyway.
Digital gaming isn't going to take over for me, not while my xbox has a shitty 20gb hard disk in there and Microsoft are raping people for the 120gb version.
Well no crap!
Who wants to sit at the same location and vegetate in the same position if you could go portable?
We all know "hardcore" PC gamers go with a desktop but anybody else would go for a laptop.
Same with gaming devices, the iPod Touch and iPhone are poised to become the most prominent and they probably already are. With some like nVidia Tegra 2 or whatever we could all game casually and not fight over stupid overpriced old hardware like the Xbox 360.
They're lumping darling Jamdat in then.
Stop dreaming Johnny Boy, you and your "ulterior motives". Just cause you say it wont make it so! PPL want:
1. To be able to trade in old games to knock a few bucks off new ones.
2. Awesome next gen Uncharted 2 type IPs (40gb is it?)
3. To not be limited to 8gb and and force devs to dumb down titles.
4. To not wait 5 days to download a 40gb game.
5. To not have to buy a new hard drive for every 4 to 6 games.
6. To have faster pipes cheap.
So until you can make all that happen, physical media will be here for a looooooooooooooooong time!!!
PS Hey Retailers, Microsoft, EA and that fatso Gabe Newell are not your friends...
looks like he just farted or just damned constipated.
Has anyone thought it a little odd that an article debating the death knell of physical media is just above the roumored PSP Go umd addon?
That picture makes him look like such a douche.
That picture just makes me laugh.
Looks like an emo/pedophiliac CEO.
Motivational tools that help enlist youngsters into spamming all their friends, sometimes strangers to increase the size of their virtual farm. That's the easiest way to train kids to look at ads.
I totally see this happening with Comcast's new cap and the ones that will trickle down to everyone else.
When I need to decide between
A) Buying a game
B) Surfing the internet
C) Watching streaming content
D) Online gaming
E) Buying digital HD movies/tv shows
to stay under that cap (or soon to yours "pay per GB"), I'm gonna guess that your "Physical media is dead" attitude will change a bit.