GameStop President Tony Bartel Believes Used Games Playback Will Play Key role going forward in the video game business ...
Forbes
GameStop President Tony Bartel was one of the 48,200 attendees who made the annual pilgrimage to E3 2013 in Los Angeles this week.
Interesting revolution going on in video games. Gamers want the ability to play older games, to own their games, trade their games. The video game industry faces a tipping point similar to music.
Music abandoned the physical thing, the hard good, for iTunes and that was a mistake. There is something about the physical thing that makes a product have presence. Digital "things" may be easier to move but they don't have the same "top of mind" presence created by walking by them or seeing them on the shelf.
I'm selling my albums in the Story of Cancer Store (http://storyofcancer.gostorego.com/ ) and those physical things hold memories of friends, places and time that digital copies will never create. The game industry was just taught a valuable lesson in THINGNESS.