Re:Physical Product More Profitable? (Score 1)

The thing to remember is that for a game publisher, physical copies are more profitable than downloads. Why? Well yes, theres the initial cost of packaging and whanot, but think of it this way: Target, Walmart, Best Buy, all the stores that sell video games buy a ton of the copies of these games. So, the game publisher will sell, from day one the publisher will sell hundreds of thousands if not millions of games worldwide. If the end store doesn't sell many copies, thats their problem, by that time the publisher has their check, and their warehouse is empty. On the flip side, if you have downloads, you can make a game and post it for downloading, if only 10 people download the game, then you're only getting the money for 10 downloads and you make no money even though you saved on packaging.

That being said, I think a mix of the two will always be there, I love that Steam offers downloadable games, it makes installing HL:2 a lot easier when I reformat the computer, I just log in, tell it to download, take a shower and play. Theres no screwing around with changing discs, no worrying about keycodes, although I'll always buy a physical copy of the game because I just don't like the idea of not having something I can hold in my hand while still paying $50 for it.