GameStop sees majority of digital sales from cash; won't pursue used PC game sales

GameStop is building its digital distribution business, having seen a 158 percent growth year-over-year in the third quarter, with strong returns thanks to customers who don't use credit cards.

"70 percent of our sales for DLC is non credit card. So that's a customer either paying with cash, GameStop gift card or trade credit," Steve Nix, manager of PC digital distribution for GameStop told us at DICE 2012. "Think about all those Call of Duty Elite subscriptions and all those customers who aren't using a credit card to purchase them."

"We're actually growing [the downloadable content] market, because about half our DLC customers never purchased DLC previously. So, for game developers that want to sell more DLC, we're introducing gamers to DLC for the first time in our stores."

Nix recognized that it may seem odd the retail chain's brick and mortar stores are so successful selling digital content. It's clearly servicing customers who don't have credit cards or don't want to use credit cards, but still wish to extend their favorite games. He "absolutely" feels this same situation is what's pushing their in-store PC full game sales, despite PC gamers having so many online purchasing options.

Since Gamestop purchased Stardock's Impulse digital distribution store, we wanted to know if it would continue to pursue Goo, which would have essentially created a "used PC games market."

Nixing the idea, he said "We don't see a lot of interest in that model from our publishing partners." He recognizes customers would be interested, but is not really seeing publisher support for such a model.