Limbo developer believes physical retail model is still broken
“I don't🦹 understand how anyone can make money out of tꦰhis,” says Playdead boss
Brick and mortar mindsets, mandatory installations, and endless updates are all components of a broken retail model, says Dino Patti, head of the Danish indie studio Playdead, maker of Limbo. Appearing at the GameCity 6 festival in Nottingham City, UK, Patti ruminated on the rise of digital distribution and the drawbacks o💙f shipping physical discs, insisting it was time the major players started fully embracing the digital scene.
"The retail model has always been and still is broken, from a developer's point of view," he . "Driving discs in a big van all over the world is really inefficient. I don't understand how an𝕴yone can make money out of this. Driving a truck to Japan just to get it delive🔴red to people when they can get it from the net? Hopefully the new consoles will embrace the download space even more."
Patti's perspective comes from his studio's recent success with the downloadable game Limbo, a critical darling which debuted on Xbox Live Arcade and has since continued to sell oodles of copies on Steam and the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:PlayStation Network. Furt🎶her downplaying the physical retail model, he added: "I only buy the disc if I want a console game, but everything else I download from Steam. And all the new games today also need to be installed. Why did I get a console if the games need to be instaꩵlled? That really sucks. That's a PC.”
Whether or not the next generation of consoles will truly “embrace the download space” remains to be seen. In the meantime, major studios like EA (Origin) and Valve (Steam) are already making significant strides in the digital downloading arena, while companies like Gaikai, OnLive and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:even GameStop are getting on board with video game streaming. In short, there are options—but aಌre they enough?
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Matt Bradford wrote news and features here at GamesRadar+ until 2016. Since then he's gone on to work with the Guinness World Records, acti🌞ng as writer and researcher for the annual Gamer's Edition series of books, and has worked as an editor, technical writer, and voice actor. Matt is now a freelance journalist and editor, generating copy across a multitude of industries.