Let us sell your DLC, pleads GameStop

Having claimed that the increasing focus on DLC won’t deter gamers from buying pre-owned, GameStop has gone on to state that publishers could radically enhance the value of their digital offerings if they bring bricks and mortar retail into the loop.

The key point for you to understand about the evolution of our strategy is that it will allow consumers to discover digital gaming through the most powerful element in this business, a knowledgeable, passionate, GameStop associate, with unique knowledge of gaming to provide expert advice to the gaming enthusiast,” COO Paul Raines told investors.

We have demonstrated in the past that the assisted sales marketing environment in our stores leads to high attachment rates for accessories, magazine subscriptions, strategy guides, and Xbox Live, PlayStation, and Nintendo network point cards. In fact, if you look at our network point cards, digital game downloads, (inaudible) World of Warcraft time cards, we generated $170 million in digital sales in 2009, representing a 55 per cent growth rate over 2008.

Digital content will become a seamless add-on sale when it is recommended by your game advisor, and we will eliminate much of the friction that has existed in the digital world. We will bring the power of our buy-sell-trade model to these digital sales.”

CEO Dan DeMatteo added that he believes a fresh partnership between publisher and retail can go as far as to promote the increased production of quality DLC.

We see a tremendous opportunity with the downloadable content to encourage software developers and publishers to create DLC, because we will be able to market it,” he stated.

Right now, today, it is very difficult to discover and find, add-on content with the tools available. We think we can move the needle significantly. I think, someday in the future, we will be rolling up all of our digital sales and talking about those in total, as they are coming from multiple sources. They come from the cards that we sell in the store that get used on a digital platform. It also includes digital downloads that come off of our website. It will be the DLC sales that we will have in the store and it will be income that comes from our Jolt gaming company, as we promote the browser games in the store.

So we really see digital revenues coming from four or five different sources and as a matter of fact, we are working on more.”