Square Enix: Digital is the first option for a generation of gamers

How digital and boxed work together will be crucial to the future of the games industry, says Square Enix.

Western CEO Phil Rogers made the statement after explaining why the firm is releasing its new Hitman as a digital release before Christmas, with a boxed version to follow in 2016.

The new Hitman will arrive on December 8th, with regular, free content updates to follow throughout the year.

Boxed games are a really important part, retail is an important part, of the whole Hitman experience,” said Rogers. So we feel that at some stage people will want to buy it in a physical form, when it is all completed and packaged up in that sort of way. Those are the sort of things we feel strongly about, and we will talk about that towards the end of the year. How digital and boxed work in harmony is going to be really important, not just for us and Hitman but for the industry as well.

He added: There are different audiences for boxed and digital, and certainly for the generation of gamers today, digital is the first option. It is instant, it is secure, and safe, and stored, and it is a way they can get games faster. There is a generation of gamers coming through where digital is the first choice and boxed is a nice complement to that.”