Digital delivery is the future
It's being widely reported around the web that EA's Peter Moore, ex-Microsoft and now president of EA Sports, has told GamesIndustry.biz that the future of content delivery for EA lies in online digital delivery.The news is being treated as some big shocker, as if online content delivery, and making a commitment to it, is a bold move, which it quite blatantly isn't.
Now whilst many sites are either lauding Moore as a far-seeing sage or decrying him as a blasphemous traitor, the truth of the matter is that digital delivery is gradually gaining popularity. One example is Steam, Valve's digital delivery system, that has had more teething troubles than a whole nest of crocodiles... but nowadays you're odd if you don't have some form of digital delivery.
Certainly, with rapidly growing concerns over the environment and many campaigns already in full swing to reduce the 'road miles' of goods, there's an eco-angle for digital delivery that I'm sure someone will exploit soon enough... and it probably won't be long until Nintendo launch a memory-enabled cart for the DS to allow for downloads through the Wii for handheld owners to grab games that way.
The point of Moore's statement is that the hardware in many peoples' homes, such as the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360, now make getting online near-seamless and certainly easier for the non-tech savvy. The natural follow-on for this is for digital content, in the form of a game or movie to be delivered with just as much ease. This is happening now, and has been for some time. All Moore is doing is confirming EA's commitment to improving and enlarging this area.
In other news, the Pope has admitted to being Catholic and research has shown that bears do indeed use the woods for their toilet business.
