Digital Sales Initiated at Retail

Gamers are buying digital interactive entertainment—games, DLC, digital goods or otherwise—all over the place. The challenge to the game industry is to tap into everywhere the consumer wants to buy and make the process integrated and simple.

Gamestop is selling Xbox Live Arcade point cards at retail as one of the company’s biggest movers. The plan is to make the purchase seamless for the customer. A player can grab a point card at the register and the purchase will be automatically linked to her Xbox Live profile with the desired digital download waiting in her queue.

This is the real future of game purchasing. It’s not going to be digital versus retail. It’s going to be about making a seamless experience for a customer to buy whenever, where ever and however they want. Eliminating obstacles to purchase is a key way to grow our business.

We’ve been strongly expanding the market with casual and social games. Now we need to use our technology, marketing expertise and gamification principles to create a seamless video game experience for users across all media—console, PC, mobile, cloud-based, set-top and every other possible platform.

A gamer can access their in-game progress anywhere and play forward with seamless auto saves. They can buy DLC and have it accessible at home on the television for family play, on the laptop or tablet for single-player games, on mobile and on the cloud for MMO experiences. All seamless, all integrated, and all effectively monetized in a way that allows all sorts of players to pay as they want and play as they want.

Gamer Utopia? Or perhaps publisher Utopia. . . ?  

http://www.thealistdaily.com/news/gamestop-enhancing-digital-sales/