In a recent interview with GameDaily Dan DeMatteo espoused his views on digital distribution. The Gamestop CEO expressed his belief that "the network won't be in place to do digital distribution of full games until 2020 to 2025" claiming that "right now, a 30GB game with your best T1 line is about 72 hours to [download] it." Mr. DeMatteo also warns that digital distribution will yield publishers less money from sales. [more info] In an email response, Earthworm Jim developer Dave Perry accused DeMatteo of confusing investors and worked to counter everything DeMatteo had to say.
Source: 1Up.Com [ more info ]

We here at GU are used to gaming big wigs spouting off at the mouth. But, DeMatteo's comments on digital distribution left me rolling my eyes, shaking my head, and muttering obscenities. It's like he took everything that was accurate and deliberately said the opposite. Then of course, Dave Perry waltzed in with a bucket of common sense and started dumping it liberally over DeMatteo's nonsense.

You know I get that DeMatteo probably feels a bit threatened by digital distribution. If the technology proves successful (which it already has in my opinion), his business goes under. Though, honestly, you know as well as I do that when he finally "gets it" and sees the proverbial writing on the wall, he'll hop on the bandwagon and proudly announce that Gamestop is launching thier own digital distribution network.

By the way... the caricature of DeMatteo is horrible. Just saying.

Edited to add:
Apparently Gamestop already supports digital distribution as the option is made available by way of TryMedia's ActiveStore application. And DeMatteo missed this how?

I downloaded VanGuard through the direct2drive thinger, as well as this lastest Warhammer Online beta.

If you wanna keep truckin' you gotta change with the times. Just look at Cher!

People always fear change...and then there are the people that always try to make people fear change.

Maybe he means that GameStop's digital distribution method won't be up until then.

As far as I'm concerned digital distribution has already been proven on the micro level with World of Warcraft, as well as through iTunes and other movie digital distribution sites.

How long until game developers start the digital distribution revolution? If they offer both digital and hard-copy options, we'll finally get some demand data on distribution methods.

Yup, that analysis sounds about right. The guy, it sounds like, is trying his best to keep investors on board. I'm not about to feel sorry for him though, Gamestop treats it's employees like crap, at least at the management level and below.

Yep head in the sand like the American auto industry was....
ah well....
And since I don't know what he looks like the caricature looks fine to me

That's funny, I bought Day of Defeat: Source and orange box thru Steam, and they downloaded in a couple hours.

You know, I'm living proof that this is a load of moo. 95% of my games have recently been either directly purchased online, or downloaded via a subscription service (Metaboli or Gametap).

EA Store, Direct2Drive, Steam Gameplanet, Gametap, Metaboli, Greenhouse... they all provide easy download for games.

Not only that, some of the games (Take Warhammer Online or Lord of the Rings Online) are 12Gb+ (I think LotR:O comes in the biggest at over 16GB). Fair enough, you have to leave it overnight to download... but it gets downloaded just fine.

So we already have a full, thriving digital distribution system in place, and I'm proof of it...

Not that i am condoning it, but people can download full games illegally via torrents in a few days. So i think the infrastructure is already there, obviously he would prefer to pretend it doesnt exist, rather than learn how to use it.

Same as they thought digital distribution of music wouldnt work till napster slapped them all in the face.

Digital distribution isnt all that its hyped up to be, in my opinion, since digital copies tend to be equipped with a lot more DRM than their non-digital distribution counterparts in many cases.