Gamestop Making Compromises
The thoroughly successful video game specialty store has been keeping up a hard line on the viability of downloadable titles for quite some time. The suits at Gamestop still do believe that the online retail download services such as Steam are not an especially profitable way of selling full games. They believe that broadband is still not fast enough to fully support this service, and gamers will therefore look to other places to pick up their games. This makes retail stores viable business-wise. Gamestop will not be moving on this point of view anytime soon, even though they do sell a small number of PC titles as downloadable entities on their web site. A large sale online service is unlikely.
Small add-ons to games, on the other hand, are apparently a more lucrative proposition. Gamestop is therefore beginning a project that will allow users to directly purchase updates to games for the XBOX 360 and PS3. This system will still work through tangible retail locations, as users will use electronic kiosks to purchase items and get them directly sent to their consoles. This new idea is set to begin testing in the early months of 2010.
Source: Gamasutra
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