EA head honcho John Riccitiello sounds rather pleased with the performance of thedownloadable PS3 version of Mass Effect 2, which was released the sameday as the retail boxed version.He says digital distribution accounted for a"meaningful" percentageof the game's overall PS3 sales, suggesting future day-one digital options could become standard on consoles.
Mass Effect 2 was an important test for the PlayStation Network. In addition to arriving on release day, the downloadeats up more than12 GB of hard disk space, but Riccitiello said it still accounted for more than 10% of the game's overall sales. This, he noted, is in spite of EA not pouring any real marketing budget into the game. It's not a huge number, to be sure, but it is certainly not negligible.
"This was really more about proving it can be done than it was proving what the opportunity would be. So an unmarketed game one year after the original was done on the Xbox and the PC, we released the PS3 and managed to do very, very well with it," he said.
Riccitiello said of the people at Sony, "They were very cautious about their infrastructure so it was mostly a technology test." And it looks like they passed with flying colors.
If day-one digital versions were standard (or at least more prominent), do you think your buying habits would change? Most of us here covet the box and tend to hoard things, but perhaps convenience and instant gratification could take over...
[Source:IGN]
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Mar 9, 2011
