EA: Packaged goods won't go away in the next 20 years
Senior VP Jens Uwe Intat believes games are too big for pure digital distribution
Dr Jens Uwe Intat, senior VP and general manager for European publishing in Europe at Electronic Arts, has told GamesIndustry.biz that he believes physical distribution of videogames is going to play an important role in the industry for at least the next 20 years.
Speaking on the relationship between publishers and retailers, Intat explained that the file sizes with respect to videogames are too large for general bandwidth available to consumers - and that while additional services and content can be digitally distributed, even if the pipelines were bigger, the games themselves would simply grow as well.
"On the specific question of where packaged goods will go - there are two factions, but I'm clearly in the camp that doesn't think it's going to go away before I retire," he said. "So that's hopefully another 20 years or so...
"The reason why I'm so convinced is that I've always been saying our softare developers eat up storage space so much quicker than telcos can build distribution. You can always see technological quantum leaps in terms of digital distribution capacity, it's all true, but if you see how those guys increase the size of games... it's just unbelievable.
"I mean, we used to be below 1GB, but we're now building games that have 8, 9, 10GB - and if broadband distribution is going to allow 10GB to be distributed in half an hour, we'll have games that are 100GB. Because the graphical resolution increases,
"The content size of games, say Need for Speed, the size of the open world that you can use increases - so you just need more and more storage space, which is going to, again, make the pipeline a big bottleneck.
"So I think there will still be a need for a physical distribution starter, and then services and additional content can be distributed online," he added.
The fascinating full GamesIndustry.biz interview with Jens Uwe Intat, in which he offers insight into the changing music industry business models and how it's informing EA's overall strategy, is available now.