Square Enix revealed last month that one-third of its video game sales come from digital downloads. Now, President Yosuke Matsuda has said that the company plans to take advantage of the increasing popularity of digital sales over Steam, Amazon, PlayStation Network and Xbox Live.
As expected, digital games are more popular in North America and Europe. Matsuda believes that it’s easier for consumers to download titles especially since they don’t go out of stock. He also said that Square Enix will be able to circumvent the pre-owned market by selling directly to customers. Matsuda further elaborated:
As we are trying to secure profit through utilizing stock of past titles, profitability of HD games must now also be considered over a certain time frame. It is not easy to recoup development costs solely by initial sales, however download sales will allow us to increase profit in a long tail manner.
Square Enix also said that it plans to increase download sales in Japan, where the percentage of digital downloads is still pretty low. The company will be focusing on improving its e-STORE in order to increase “direct-to-customer ratio of not only game content, but also anime and merchandise.”
[Source: Siliconera]
