EA to go “100 percent digital” in future

Business

July 3, 2012

The future! It’s almost here, you know – there’ll be flying cars and food replicators and interstellar colonial starships next month, or maybe the month after that, or maybe next year. But soon. And when all that happens, EA’s business will be entirely digital, because that’s just how things work in the future. Think Skynet, but without all the evil cyborgs. Or with the evil cyborgs, for that matter.

“It’s in the near future. It’s coming,” EA game boss Frank Gibeau told GamesIndustry, referring to EA’s business being digital, not the bit about evil cyborgs.

“We have a clear line of sight on it and we’re excited about it. Retail is a great channel for us. We have great relationships with our partners there. At the same time, the ultimate relationship is the connection that we have with the gamer. If the gamer wants to get the game through a digital download and that’s the best way for them to get it, that’s what we’re going to do. It has a lot of enhancements for our business. It allows us to keep more that we make. It allows us to do some really interesting things from a service level standpoint; we can be a lot more personalised with what we’re doing.”

For the moment, Gibeau said, gamers will still be able to buy boxed copies of games, just not forever.

“If customers want to buy a game at retail, they can do that too. We’ll continue to deliver games in whatever media formats make sense and as one ebbs and one starts to flow, we’ll go in that direction,” he explained. “For us, the fastest growing segment of our business is clearly digital and clearly digital services and ultimately Electronic Arts, at some point in the future… we’re going to be a 100 percent digital company, period. It’s going to be there some day. It’s inevitable.”

Last month, EA’s commerce guy David DeMartini said that the company is looking to make Origin “a better version of Steam”. So we’re probably talking very long-term here.