retail posts

During last week's annual E3 video game trade show, GamesIndustry.biz was able to catch up with new EA Sports president Peter Moore. Moore discussed several key strategies from his playbook, including the increased focus on digital distribution by Electronic Arts in the coming years -- and months.

"You're talking to a company here that truly believes that every consumer will ultimately go online," Moore said. Adamant that his company will lead that charge, Moore explained that a focus on disc-based sales was hurting the industry giant. The cost of writing games to physical media is not expensive, but the process of shipping the products, creating packaging, relinquishing a share of sales to retailers... all of that and more adds up to a price that EA would like to eliminate.

"We have every intention over a period of time ... of moving this company to be one that is totally digitally-focused," Moore said.

Of course, it's pure hyperbole and fantasy to believe that all consumers will adopt an online-only marketplace, and brick-and-mortar retailers will certainly raise objections. Moore maintained his stance, stating that companies such as Best Buy and Walmart adopted foresight in an effort to serve their customers at physical sites as well as online. Bluntly, Moore said that retailers will either "embrace it and find a business model that makes sense, or they become in the end monolithic."

Our friends at Joystiq recently acquired on the box art for EA's Sci-Fi Survival Horror game, Dead Space. It's fittingly gruesome, and it proves that the player is not the only one who can strategically dismember targets! Yes, the art features a human hand floating in space. Apparently those nasty Necromorphs got to some poor space miner. Maybe this is one of the many gruesome deaths developer Glen Schefield hinted at recently.

We noticed, of course, that the hand is floating outside the ship. That's just a reminder that we'll be able to use our grav boots in the game to walk outside on the hull of the ship. In fact, we'll be able to jump between and walk on lots of different surfaces in the game's zero gravity environments. Cool.