Format holders need to expand DLC market, says Farrell

THQ boss Brian Farrell has said that downloadable content revenues for console publishers won't reach significant proportions until Sony and Nintendo ramp up their online services.

Although he acknowledged the highly-regarded efforts of Microsoft's Xbox Live service, he said more console offerings would help push the concept and acceptance of downloadable content to consumers.

"It's hard to pick a timing of when consumer adoption of any trend will take off. If you look at markets like Asia, China, Korea and others it's a digital download market because they are predominantly online," commented Farrell at an BMO Capital Markets conference yesterday.

"Obviously we're seeing a huge uptake with Xbox Live since that's a very, very user friendly download system. We get a fair number of downloads on our PC business. PlayStation 3, as you know, we still haven't seen the roll-out by Sony of their robust online strategy and Nintendo keeps working on their digital download strategy as well.

"So as some of our partners continue to roll-out the ability to download digitally and consumers adopt those digital download mechanisms we'll see that growth accelerate. It'll probably keep growing but we need some more visibility from a couple of key partners to see that real growth driver over the next several years," he said.