Valve’s Digital Sales Ready to Overtake Those at Retail
By Chris on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 6:39 PM PST In Computer, Game Companies, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Games, Games Industry, Half-Life, Valve
We know that Valve is raking in the cash from games sold through Steam, but Valve prez Gabe Newell has revealed that within the next several months, they’ll be making more from digital distribution than they do at stores, according to GI.biz.
“We see sub ten per cent growth rates in our core, packaged retail business,” Newell said. “Right now we’re seeing close to 200 per cent growth in the alternative ways of connecting with customers.
“It will actually pass over in the next three months, how much of our business is coming from retail versus how much is coming from other channels,” he said.
Many gamers would still prefer to have a physical copy of the game that they can hold. And who could blame them? A reporter pointed this out, to which Newell said, “At this point, people have had Steam long enough that their experience is that Steam is more reliable than physical media.”
Add in support for Steam Cloud and the ability to access your games and saves from any computer, and it’s hard to really argue with him. Lose or scratch a game disc, or misplace the CD-key, and you’re suddenly out of luck.
Newell also addressed the concept of Steam distributing non-game related media, and how Valve is looking at that in the long-term. “It’s something that we’re looking at,” he said. “Right now we’re focused on games… but I think as we get more mature, there’s no reason that we wouldn’t.”
One thing that got me very excited about that possibility: Newell talked about the potential to distribute Firefox, where Steam Cloud could be used to allow you to access your bookmarks and settings.
personally, i don’t think i’ve ever seen a non-console version of any Valve game in a store before…
yeah, there hard to find, Steam is a big scam anyway, i can sell my retail copy to a friend, if i get the steam version ill never be able to sell it, not to mention steam hogs alot of bandwith and some resources, plus games these days are like 6-8gigs, unless you have a bitchin connection, thats still gonna take a few days which is lame
Your just a little bit biased there. A scam? how about one of the best ideas made. Theres 1 downfall to steam and that is having to download the game initially, but oh no you download it overnight and then u never have to worry about it again. Much easier than going out, hoping the store has the game in stock, and then rushing home to install it. Also steam games u dont just sell, u dont play counterstrike for a month then sell it. Steam doesn’t hog bandwith and I dont know where you get your information from but seems like you had one bad experience so you feel the need to bash steam. FYI downloading hl2 + cs only takes 2 hours, not a few days. Congrats at failing~
Physical copies get broken over time. First I thought that I would prefer a physical copy. After thinking it for a while, I realized that I never read manuals, I hate finding discs and hate using them to play/hate downloading no-dvd cracks.
Bhwaaaaaa but I can’t buy anything online yet >:(
Even if downloading took a week, who cares?
Apparently the
douchecommenter ‘wow’ does.