Since Gamestop is having a few issues with sales at this point, it seems like perhaps an appropriate time to look at issues in the game retailing business and the timeline for some upcoming changes. For a number of years, folks have predicted the death of games on physical media, and certainly it does make sense that a button click to purchase is a better distribution model than sending folks to a store to pick up something that could simply be downloaded. There have been a few barriers to the transition: Read More »
Category Archives: retail
There seems to be quite a bit of interest in the game developers cooperative, and I’ve been having a number of conversations about building such a thing. This being the case, it’s likely worthwhile to get into an overview both of what a cooperative is, and why it’s such a good solution for developer needs at this time. Read More »
I was asked the other day by an interviewer about the past and future of manifesto games, with which I have been glad to have been involved. As I was telling him, though, that a portal dedicated to indie games is redundant by definition in the current environment, where a thousand flowers are definitely blooming, it occurred to me that what is needed now isn’t a distribution channel, but cooperative representation for marketing and business development. Read More »
Bijan Sabet followed up a tweet pondering the future of libraries with a post including the feedback he had received. Some of the responses were interesting visions, while some simply crowed the death of the printed word as the end of libraries. A fair amount of what I’ve been called upon to do since 2001 is evaluation of how physical retail can continue to have value in a world of digital distribution. -I dealt with this specifically as VP of Business at Electronics Boutique, and since then in a consulting role for various initiatives. Amusingly, the redundancy of libraries and of video game retail stores ends up being sort of the same issue at this point in history: Read More »