GameStop: Digital downloads an insignificant threat

GameStop vice chairman and COO Daniel DeMatteo has dismissed the number of full games being made available for digital downloads as ‘insignificant’.

Speaking in an earnings call following the company’s stellar Q2 results yesterday, DeMatteo also expressed doubts over whether the new 160GB PS3 will be used for much more than music and video downloads.

DeMatteo said: I think the primary reason why Sony has introduced that 160-gig hard drive is they want consumers to use that as a hub of their media system, with both movies and music… we do expect publishers will develop some revenue stream by adding on digitally distributed content on selected games but the forecast for this in total is pretty insignificant.

We don’t expect full distribution of new games to be a threat due to the game size and distribution speed, so again we are looking at this as Sony’s introduction of a system to act as a media hub.”