Moore: "No two ways about it", digital transition will have casualties
EA COO Peter Moore believes the digital transition is inevitable - and some companies won't make it through.
"The packaged goods business, while still flourishing and strong, eventually – as we've seen in music and movies – will go to the cloud," Moore told IndustryGamers.
"It will go digital and we'll be delivering games from the cloud and delivering games directly to hard drives and we're still going to sell a lot of discs for the foreseeable future. But eventually, physical media will diminish as the core part of how gamers get their content."
Asked whether the industry would see closures during this period, Moore agreed some companies would fold rather than adapt.
"But I think we always see that with every transition. Publishers either make it through or they don't – transitions are hard because revenue slows down and costs speed up," he said.
"The companies that have prepared themselves and have diversified their offerings to chase the consumer wherever they want to play games are the companies that will succeed and thrive and flourish. Companies that continue to rely on the old model as the model changes before our eyes, unless they change their ways and invest in the future those companies eventually will die off. No two ways about it."
The executive is pretty certain that EA will be one of the survivors.
"We might be the company that sells the last disc. But by then we'll also be doing several billions of dollars in digital and direct to consumer revenues – however digital is going to be delivered," he said.
"What I love about being here is we're purely focused on content. We're very platform agnostic – I'm kind of fond of saying that if it's got a button and a screen and you can put inputs into it, it's a games machine.
"We've seen that from the Kindle all the way to the browser, and EA is always eager to look at opportunities to bring our content to people who want to play games on machines; I can't think of a company right now that has more experiences across platforms than EA.
"I think the excitement and freedom that provides you to be able to talk to the gamer in a way that the gamer simply says, 'I'm playing games on this device, and I want EA games,' and it's our job to deliver them."
There's plenty of interest in the full interview through the link above.
Thanks, GoNintendo.