GameStop CEO Claims Physical Games Will Always Be in Business

Despite the surge in digital games being offered online, CEO Paul Raines remains adamant that it's business as usual at GameStop.

In an interview with Fortune, Paul Raines claims that his company is adjusting to the rise in digital sales throughout the gaming industry just fine. GameStop's $9.3 billion revenue for 2014 consisted of over $948 million in digital sales. Raines mentions that GameStop's sales of downloadable content, full game downloads, Steam gift cards and the profits from its browser-based gaming website Kongregate accounted for nearly 42 percent of the downloadable gaming market. For 2015, digital game sales are expected to account for $11.1 billion of the business' overall $82.5 billion profit (roughly 13 percent).

“Disc-based games will be around forever,” Raines said. “The market has seen physical music sales down 50% from its peak and physical movie sales down 60% from its peak, but even in a doomsday scenario, disc-based games will be around for a long time. I see a complimentary business where we sell discs plus download like the current console mode. Virtual reality games will also likely follow this model.”

Raines claims the overall decline of physical movies and music will not be as drastic in the video game market, and I kind of agree. While digital downloads are somewhat bad for GameStop, since you can't trade in digital games for a minuscule amount of credit in return, I just don't think discs/cartridges will be going away anytime soon. It's nice to have your library all on your hard drive, but I like looking at my shelves of video games.

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