American McGee Predicts Real-World Retailers' Demise

[Sniper Team 4]

First off, if retail chains like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Target go under--or simply switch to online only--like he says, the U.S. jobs market is going to take a bullet to the head and probably never recover (NOTE: He said Best Buy, not Game Stop or another video game only store. He's talking about everyone). For every "unreliable employee" out there, there are ten hard working ones who need the job, or simply want to work and do it well.
Second: online works great--until something goes wrong. Then, good luck trying to fix that problem. Perhaps it's different elsewhere, but at my store people prefer to deal with someone they can actually see--or even an actual person--when they have a problem. And don't get me started on online return centers. Yeah...not fun.
Finally (and this is just me speaking opinion), the day this happens, I'm betting a lot of people will be done with gaming. Owning a physical copy of the game is something I treasure a lot. I get great pride out of displaying my collections. You can still play the game if the company goes out of business, or gets hacked and has to shut down for a bit.

 

[brunothepig]

I doubt physical copies will disappear completely. There are those who don't like digital distribution, there are those who just like having physical copies, and the most important part, the uninformed. The people who don't have Steam because they don't really know about it, or the parents and relatives buying games for their children. Retail stores will always have a place. Hey, bookstores are still here, and I'm sure as hell never buying ebooks.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

What about collector's edition of games? Gamers love those. I will never switch to digital distribution. If retail ceases to exist, I'll cease to be a gamer. There is something special about having that box with the disc inside.

 

[TxMxRonin]

You have to remember something. There's a sizable portion of the world that either doesn't have broadband or don't want it. I honestly doubt business are going to downsize to accommodate ~60% of any given area.

 

[Space Jawa]

Isn't this about the same thing 90% of the game industry has been trying to 'predict' for the last half-decade or so?

 

[RazielXT]

Not counting my psone games, I have only one retail game, which was bought long ago, so yeah, I dont care if it happens. Simply few clicks on steam to become owner is just way too easy and comfortable.

 

[Tyrant T100]

Although I kind of support the death of retail gaming due to the small stores always failing that have knowledgeable friendly staff, good prices and good return policies and are replaced with the Big stores like GAME where the staff are rude and everything is overpriced I welcome this.

However that being said I worry about complete digital distribution because it could all gone in a Flash, what if your STEAM account is stolen or banned, what if Valve go bankrupt and Steam is shut down. This worries me to the point where I've actually re-bought some of my Steam games retail (Dark Messiah for example) so I can play them again in the future if anything happens to STEAM.
Also a problem with Digital Downloads is that I have bad internet so downloading a game can take 6 hours or more when it would take 10 minutes to install of a disc.

 

[kurokenshi]

Gotta disagree with you Mr.McGee!

Digital distribution is not a viable option for me, it'd take a week for me to download a 5gb game and thats excluding the cost of bandwidth in my country. Also dislike not having a physical copy of something I purchased like someone else metioned earlier. The games I buy usually get delivered to me at work release day morning and I really have no problem with that.

Don't get me wrong I think Digital Distribution is great but it will never replace retail. Some of us just prefer physical copies.

 

[Jaythulhu]

(and to everyone decrying downloads yes boo hoo you don't have a good internet connection, news flash most other people do)

Dude, there's absolutely no reason to be such a douchebag. You have a good internet connection, good for you. That doesn't make the gripes of those who don't live in an area where such connections are rare wrong, or bad, or anything else. In fact, you bragging about yours makes you an arsehole. News flash, you're not special because there's better internet connections available in your area. Wish my parents still paid for my 'net like yours do.

 

[AMMO Kid]

The retailers might try this to eliminate second hand game sales, but other than that I don't see this catching on in the near future.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Ah McGee, I appreciate your whimsical interpretations of Huxley's Doors of Perception through the medium of Carrol's seminal work, and your selling prowess of your name alone is worthy of putting you up their with Meier.

But if he came around my area and started predicting the demise of bricks and mortar shops based on nothing more than a flimsy interpretation of resource wasting, I'd say
[HEADING=2]OI. MCGEE. NO![/HEADING]

I like your games but I don't like your reality. Go back to making software before I give you a SLAP.

 

[kurokenshi]

Gotta disagree with you Mr.McGee!

Digital distribution is not a viable option for me, it'd take a week for me to download a 5gb game and thats excluding the cost of bandwidth in my country. Also dislike not having a physical copy of something I purchased like someone else metioned earlier. The games I buy usually get delivered to me at work release day morning and I really have no problem with that.

Don't get me wrong I think Digital Distribution is great but it will never replace retail. Some of us just prefer physical copies.

Please try to understand what he says.

Physical stores will disappear and I couldn't agree more. Since I live in Germany where according to politicians I can't decide what games I can play I have to buy many of them online. And what do I buy online? A physical copy.

Please try to understand what I am saying.

In your case Digital is a better option because of your politicians.
But for me and others from my country(South Africa) internet costs are extremely high and you don't get much for what you pay for. I'll give you numbers please be advised I'm using my currency.

Fixed line what I have
Telephone line rental R180 a month
1mb ADSL line rental R280 a month no bandwidth included

ISP uncapped account R300 a month Shaped & Throttled bandwidth slow as hell took me an hour to download a 30mb patch

ISP capped 15gb unshaped & not throttled R300 switching to this end of the month

Wireless option
R1000 a month 15gb capped shaped bandwidth and ofcourse it's not zoned in my area.

See this is why Digital is not viable for me. I'm not saying Digital is bad I think it's great especially for Indie Devs and I would totally use it if I could afford it but thats just not going to happen with the state of Internet Services where I live.

 

[xPixelatedx]

The inventor of the Segway also thought their product would redesign cities to appease our god-like-laziness, but that never happened, because he never considered something when formulating that idea: non-lazy people like walking.

If you buy ALL your electronic equipment online, you are a lazy idiot, or you are so well off on money that an expensive misstep doesn't hurt your wallet. It just so happens game developers fit into the latter, so you can't judge the average consumer based on that. I am sorry, but there are some things you need to examine in person before you buy it, like a new TV or monitor, because pictures and videos don't do it justice. This simple fact won't go away as we approach the future, if anything it will become even more important as companies try and sell us an even bigger selection of garbage down the line.

I also love how developers all see a future where games are purely digital. Yeah, they sure don't want you buying used, so of course that's the future they envision. It's just adorable that they actually think it's going to happen.