Sony has been offering digital downloads of their PS3 titles on the same day as retail release for a while now and Nintendo has said they will do the same this year. Microsoft, however, says that they will not be following suit, at least for the time being.
“We don’t do Games on Demand on day one, we focus on boxed retail for day one,” said Xbox Live UK product manager Pav Bhardwaj. “That’s where our focus has always been and will remain that way for the foreseeable future. We release a game roughly six months after it arrives at retail at full ERP. That’s our model and we’ll be sticking to that. It’s a successful model, so why change something you don’t need to ”
“The customer has the choice of going to retail on day one if they really want to buy a particular title, or to wait a couple of months and buy it full price from the Xbox Live marketplace. It’s a successful part of our business, we’re very pleased with the growth and it continues to do really well. Clearly there’s an audience out there who are happy to purchase a product at full ERP six or so months after [its retail release],” he said.
Source: MCV {link no longer active}
