Tag Archives: digital downloads

SEGA has announced the launch of The House of the Dead 3 on PSN. The HD release of the classic horror arcade shooter has been fully updated with trophies and Move support. Newly added features such as
interactive “rescue events”, and a ranking and grading system that tracks each agent’s shot accuracy as well as the special bonus of a virtual The House of the Dead 3 arcade cabinet for PlayStation Home. The game will run you $6.99. Check out new shots in the gallery below.

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CEO Brian Farrell said during THQ’s call to investors last night the firm expects its digital sales to double next year, and continue to grow from there.

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GameStop customers will soon be able to purchase DLC via the retail chain, and the service will be start being tested early next year.

It will work in conjunction with Xbox Live and PSN, so when the customer learns of the new DLC while shopping, they can purchase it then and there, and go straight home and play it.

“A large market for full game downloads is not imminent, (but) the add-on downloadable market will grow,” said GameStop CEO Paul Raines during the BMO Capital Management conference.

No date just yet, but next year is just around the corner.

More through Reuters.

Digital download sites Steam and Direct2Drive have released charts for week ending August 8.

Looks like Dawn of War II led the group over on Steam, with the Aion Collector’s Edition pre-sale still going strong.

Over on D2D, Champions Online preorders have taken over, with Fallout 3 and the Sims 3 still doing well.

Here’s the full thing courtesy of Shack – notice Hearts of Iron III debuted on both charts:

Steam

1. Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II
2. Aion Collector’s Edition (presale)
3. Left 4 Dead
4. Hearts Of Iron III
5. Counter-Strike: Source
6. The Witcher: Enhanced Edition – Director’s Cut
7. Red Faction: Guerrilla (presale)
8. TrackMania United Forever
9. Team Fortress 2
10. Prototype

Direct2Drive

1. Champions Online (presale)
2. Fallout 3
3. The Sims 3
4. Hearts of Iron III with Sprite Packs Bundle
5. Best of Indie Bundle Vol. 1
6. Rise of Flight
7. Hearts Of Iron III
8. Aion (presale)
9. East India Company
10. Civilization 4: The Complete Edition

Dorian Bloch, GfK Chart-Track director, expects the digital download market for PC to be worth over $1 billion in 2009 thanks to services like Direct2Drive, Steam, and Metaboli.

Bloch estimates the market accumulated close to $600 million last year, with publisher’s relishing the idea of including sales number’s in GfK Chart-Track’s data.

“This is a huge business,” said Bloch at Develop. “The key thing for me in this is that these publishers support me in what I do and they want their sales included in the charts.

“Sega has been asking us, ‘when can we include our Football Manager sales in our charts?’ We’d like to include them, but I can’t just include one publisher’s sales, I need a balanced approach for doing that.”

Bloch said that the only way to include digital sales in the company’s data, is for a wider selection of publishers to start providing sales statistics.

Thanks, GI.biz.

Full-game downloads will only account for 50 percent of console sales by 2019, according to the massive report Michael Pachter sent over yesterday.

The Wedbush Morgan Securities novel reckons that full downloads won’t happen until console drives get bigger. Games can exceed 10Gb and most Xbox 360 consoles in homes have only 20Gb hard drive space because not as many people own a 120Gb Elite.

“In ten years, we envision a world where the typical console has a terabyte or more of storage, and where full game downloads are the norm,” it states.

“There will always be a sizable number of consumers who value the trade-in option and portability, and we expect those consumers to favor physical goods over digital downloads. Thus, we expect that digital downloads will represent less that 50 per cent of total game sales in ten years’ time.

“We think that the poster child for this scenario is Grand Theft Auto IV on the Xbox 360, a game first sold in physical form, with additional levels sold periodically thereafter through downloads. After a tepid embrace of its first downloadable episode, Take-Two decided to offer the first and second episodes in a combined physical package, with the two episodes allowing full game play without the purchase of the original GTA IV game disc.

“This model reinforces our belief that packaged goods will capture the majority of game purchases for the next ten years.”

The report also states that used games account for one-third of the market, proving that comsumers prefer to have a physical copy instead of a digital one.

Rock Paper Shotgun has published results of a 2,000 participant strong survey asking just how many PC game purchases are made over the counter or are digital downloads.

The result? A whopping 47 percent of those who took part don’t even leave their chairs when buying a new game for their rigs.

The results also showed that 93 percent of PC gamers bought at least one game digitally in the last 12 months and 71 percent bought more than four games digitally.

What it all boils down to is that the number of PC Gamers that responded whom exclusively buy PC Games in a shop is a mere 7 percent.

Food for thought.

By Mike Bowden