Do you think I am too enthusiastic sometimes? I do, I admit it, and I am not going to try to change that, as long as my heart will keep pumping. Why the title? Who’s threatening the computer games? EA’s approach to the digital future, as it became pretty clear in the online gaming research article we published last month. Now, it seems they are changing the direction…

…since now, the senior VP and general manager for European publishing in Europe at Electronic Arts, Dr Jens Uwe Intat, just told GamesIndustry.biz that we may still get those beautiful game packages for at least 20 more years. “On the specific question of where packaged goods will go - there are two factions, but I’m clearly in the camp that doesn’t think it’s going to go away before I retire. So that’s hopefully another 20 years or so…,” he said. Great, finally someone from EA who doesn’t want to kill the games as we know them and switch to digital distribution!<-180×150 Small Rectangle - right->

“The reason why I’m so convinced is that I’ve always been saying our software developers eat up storage space so much quicker than telcos can build distribution. You can always see technological quantum leaps in terms of digital distribution capacity, it’s all true, but if you see how those guys increase the size of games… it’s just unbelievable.”

He continued by saying that games will continue to grow in size as resolution and in-game worlds continue to grow, seeing this as the main reason for the need of a physical medium to distribute them. To be honest, that’s not what I wanted to hear, but it’s better than nothing. After all, the fact that packaged games won’t disappear makes me hope I’ll be able to grab some special editions in 2040, too, if everything goes well until then.

So…are you a fan of packaged games, or a digital distribution freak? Let us know what you think about this, because it’s a very interesting topic, in my opinion!