Namco Bandai ramps up download business

Dark Souls for PC and One Piece for PS3 will be available to download and buy on the High Street at the same time.

Namco Bandai says the move is part of its bid to extend its games IP across multiple platforms.

But US VP Carlson Choi expects retail will still be the most popular destination for gamers.

If you look at what retail is doing, it is also embracing a digital delivery platform, and have started selling DLC based on these cards,” he told MCV.

Retailers are also seeing the evolution, but I think the question is: Where are gamers going to acquire the content?

I still think you are going to see a lot of heavy acquisition being done through retail. Broadband speeds are not at the state where you can download an entire game. But I do see a lot of fans still doing that.

The evolution is going to take a while and I think retail through that time will figure out how it can still acquire the revenue.

Steve Jobs changed the way people think in the music world. People were used to having physical discs, and he transformed that entire business to a digital goods business. And he started to do that with gaming. I think a lot of the core first-party console folks are wondering how they can bridge the worlds of retail and downloads. And I think they decided: You can do physical and digital.”

That is the starting point. Now how does retail react?”