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Amidst the rising concern's at retail regarding digital content, all is not lost – for some time it will remain the arena for big budget releases, like the on-coming Modern Warfare 2 juggernaut. We all know that Activision and developer Infinity Ward expect it to be game of the year, and in 2009 there has been something new to say about the release every week.

We promised a raft of content on digital distribution in the run up to our London Games Conference, and so far we haven’t disappointed. This week’s issue of MCV magazine includes a WiiWare feature with Laurent Fischer and should prove especially illuminating, given how the formerly online-agnostic Nintendo has made such a particular move into selling digital content.

How is your business approaching the downloadable content business? Is it an opportunity or a threat? Not sure? Join the club.

There are more questions than answers when it comes to judging what kind of impact digital distribution will have on the current industry landscape, but at the same time there is some damn good research out there, a few experts, a growing number of pioneers and increasingly big bets being placed on the future.

DEVELOP'09: Pricing of game services need to be more realistic, says Schulze and Webb’s Tom Armitage

Comes with operator billing in Australia, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Russia, Singapore, Spain and the UK

The tepid sales reception of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars may not only herald the death of mature content on the DS, but it may also steal any chance developers had of delivering ambitious projects to the handheld in the future.

Government censor says parents must be held accountable for the games their children play

Kids warned off The Lost and the Damned, but Common Sense Media praises quality of Rockstar’s DLC

Ensemble spin-off studio working on new RTS content plus new IP

February 10th arrival for Beneath the Ashes, with Lara’s Shadow to follow on March 10th

Exclusive Xbox 360 downloadable content to cost 1600 Microsoft points, or around £13.50

Upcoming downloadable island becomes premium owing to scope of included content

GameStop listing hints at $19.99 retail pack for upcoming Xbox 360 downloadable content

Strauss Zelnick hints that both Xbox 360 exclusive downloadable content and debut DS outing could slip until Q2 2009

Activision and Sony move to wipe user-generated content from servers for LittleBigPlanet and Guitar Hero: World Tour

Studio’s co-founder hopes to make an announcement “in the next few weeks”

Copyright infringing content on MySpace to be automatically redistributed with imbedded ads

Free-to-play online multiplayer under threat? Plus, CoD6 confirmed for 2009 with Infinity Ward at the helm

Post-release content for Bethesda’s upcoming RPG to cut PS3 out of the loop