This is what I mean with “devaluation”. The poorer the buying experience feels, the more devaluated the product gets.

Living in germany I can tell you, that Nintendo did a great job by (buying) space within electronic retailer chains and setting up demo kiosks. Even if those are only featuring a few games (mostly their DS stuff) and the usual WiiSports – its better then nothing.

The game industry should team up and support those stores which give the consumers a great buying experience – which always relates to costly interaction space instead of just shelf space.

If they loose those social (!) places, consumers will first feel lost in digital store nirvana and then be lost as consumers at all.

A box game is so much more then just the distribution on a disk. It should be box-art, booklet etc. . And – where it all begins: the BUYING EXPERIENCE.

This was where the music industry failed by giving non-music chains (Walmart etc) exclusive discs and better prices.
If you can’t play a game in a store, if you can’t see what could be interesting to you – then boxed distribution will go down.

Apples success is based on Jobs decision to have the full control over the buying experience by establishing their Apple Stores. They don’t attend expos (MacWorld or the worlds largest fair CeBit) anymore.

Online distribution in its current state is fine for Apple and a few developers. But the rest of the industry should pay attention and avoid those “great” strategies from the music industry…

It’s like following a fool to take that route.

There is something wrong with the distribution chain – but that should be analyzed and fixed. Digital distribution in its current state means “devalueing” games, which is the exact opposite of what the industry should want…

And what happens when you are done with the game? I can’t sell my psn copy of the game. I can however recover some of the cost on my disc copy.

I do agree that game companies save money when games are digitally distributed and turn a better profit. However, are game companies thinking about the customer in the general economic recession?