The Future is Now

Brendan Sinclair over at GameSpot has a feature chronicling the history of digital distribution in games. He goes all the way back to the early 80s with Gameline downloadable game service for Atari 2600, and works his way up to Valve's Steam, the casual games market, and console manufacturers like Microsoft and Nintendo who hope to see people downloading games through their consoles in the next generation. Sinclair gets responses from representatives of EB Games, which tried and failed at digital distribution a few years ago; Three Rings, the company behind Puzzle Pirates; Telltale Games, the developer of Bone and the upcoming Sam & Max game; and Infinium Labs, which still claims the Phantom exists.

At the moment, everyone has a stake in seeing digital distribution succeed or fail. It could give developers a way to circumvent the traditional retail model and get games straight to consumers. ... On the consumer level, digital distribution could change not only how gamers get their games, but also who they get them from, how much they pay for them, and even the demographics of who gamers are.