Fate of Physical Video Game Stores?
By Dylan Campton on Jan 31st, 2009 at 5:48PM
With all the ways of purchasing games online these days, will physical game stores last? According to Rock Paper Shotgun, 47% of all PC game purchases are digital. Could this number rapidly grow?
For one there is Steam, where you create an account, purchase whichever game you want and proceed to download the game from the internet. The game is tied with your account so whenever you sign in on another PC with the same username, it shows that the game has already been purchased and can be downloaded at no extra cost. Steam also doubles as a means of communication between gamers in and out of game.
On the other hand, there are websites where you can purchase the full physical aspect of a game and have it shipped out to your address. There are also websites where you can buy CD key’s so you can borrow a friend’s copy of the game and use your recently purchased key to activate the game.
There is also the illegal way, but no one obtains games that way, right?
With all of these different ways to purchase and download games online, I don’t believe video game stores in shopping centers will last. Sure, it’s always good to buy something and have something to show for it right away, but purchasing games over the internet is so much quicker and pain free these days, that I believe everyone will be doing it soon enough. With the way the internet is developing, I believe in the next 5 years or so, the speed at which we download games will almost double.
What are your thoughts?
I always buy my games from Amazon or Steam. I think if the US gets a higher average internet speed it would be enough to make game stores completely obsolete. Buying large games over Steam is just too slow right now.
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Yes you’re right. Although, I know many people who will purchase a game, go to bed and leave it to download overnight then play it in the morning.
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