Despite their recent acquisition of cloud gaming giant Gaikai for $380 million, Sony has no plans of abandoning the retail market with their next home video game console, the PlayStation 4.
This according to Sony Computer Entertainment UK boss Fergal Gara, who told MCV recently that the retail gaming market is currently in a period of adjustment, and not a total meltdown.
"Coming down off that 2008 peak has been a steep ride for many and has involved fallout on many levels, not least of all retail. So what we're seeing is not really a surprise, a bit of a readjustment if you like. There is a bit of a reappraisal around space and the commitment from other retailers. We'd love to see as many of those retailers as possible maintain their interest in servicing the space because clearly down the road many of us are going to be doing our best to give another injection into the market whenever the next cycle starts."
Sony's commitment to retail comes shortly after a blog post from Kwalee CEO David Darling predicted the imminent demise of console gaming if they stuck to such an archaic method of product delivery as retail.
"If the next generation consoles have media drives like DVD to keep distributors and retailers happy so they can sell physical product this will make the machines uncompetitive. They will not be able to compete on price" Darling stated in his post.
The question begs to be asked why consoles would need to compete on price with mobile devices and games in the first place, as they are vastly different mediums. While there's no doubt that digital sales are increasing while retail sales alternatively slow, that's an obvious result of the general industry move to digital distribution, and not an indication that gamers have had enough with buying games at retail in general, and won't support it in the future.
There's also the issue of not everyone having access to high speed Internet or unlimited bandwidth usage, which makes downloading massive games either a great annoyance, or outright impossible. It's one thing to download a 25 MB game to your iPhone, quite another to download a 25 GB game to your PS4.
Is the PS4 doomed to failure for refusing to go digital-only? Or is David Darling blowing self-serving (he runs for a mobile game company after all) hot air? If you had the choice between retail or digital distribution for all of your PS4 games, which would you choose?
