Digital distribution unlikely to catch on soon, says Activision CEO

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has declared that high street retailers have nothing to worry about for a while yet - since it will be a long time before the digital distribution of videogames takes off.

Speaking to the New York Times, Kotick said: "The idea of full downloadable games is so far in the future that it's almost incomprehensible as an opportunity." He suggested that game downloads are currently limited by consumers' bandwidth and hard drive specifications.

However, Kotick does believe that there is plenty to of potential to earn revenues through downloadable game content, such as "characters, new weapons, new missions or auctioning off places," via services such as Microsoft's hugely successful Xbox Live Marketplace.

Kotick went on to forecast a bright future for the games industry as a whole, stating: "More people are playing games than ever before. People who were in their teens in the 80's are now playing games with their kids. When I look at the next 10 years as compared to the past 10 years, I just see better prospects."

But the industry still faces challenges that need to be overcome, according to Kotick, such as the need to make the game production process more efficient. He predicted that publishers will focus more narrowly on multi-million selling games in the future, rather than producing a wider range of titles which sell under one million units.