Retail or digital? Or maybe games as part of a subscription service like EA Access, PS Plus and Xbox Live Gold? Or a combination of all of them? It has never been easier to play games than it is right now, and EA predicts that all these ways will co-exist and be expanded even further with more subscription based services.
But in the end, digital download is the way of the future, according to Electronic Arts Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen who held a speach at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference yesterday. This is what he had to say regarding EA's view on how to sell games:
"We take a very simple view. We want the consumer to decide. We have great retail partners, we want to continue to maintain our great retail partners and they perform a lot of discovery and marketing services for us. And so, we believe there's a world where the retail partners are always going to be around, but also a lot of consumers, just like music and books, and movies, and TV have adopted, download digitally is ultimately the way of the future. We try to make sure that we're available in any place the people want to buy our games."
Jorgensen also said EA Access is doing better than predicted for Xbox One and that it is off to a good start on PC as well, and that he thinks there will be more similar services in the future. He ended by saying all these three ways to buy games will co-exist:
"Long-term, we think there's multiple models for delivery of games. People will buy games in the retail stores, they'll acquire them digitally from us, or they may subscribe to them and play in a subscription model."
Thanks, Dual Shockers.