Limbo developer says retail model is ‘broken’

Dino Patti, boss of Limbo studio PlayDead, has criticized the videogames retail business. Calling it broken, Patti has questioned the need for physical products that require installing, and believes the entire system has been inefficient since day one.

“The retail model has always been and still is broken, from a developer’s point of view,” he said. “Driving discs in a big van all over the world is really inefficient. I don’t understand how anyone can make money out of this. Driving a truck to Japan just to get it delivered to people when they can get it from the net? Hopefully the new consoles will embrace the download space even more.

“I hate to have the disc myself. I only buy the disc if I want a console game, but everything else I download from Steam. And all the new games today also need to be installed. Why did I get a console if the games need to be installed? That really sucks. That’s a PC.”

I’ve said for a while that consoles have just started to resemble crap PCs, so I definitely agree with Patti on this. Unfortunately, it’s probably not going to change anytime soon, especially in a world where Sony still thinks selling memory cards is a cool idea.

Limbo dev: the retail model is “broken” [Eurogamer]