The game retail story

So I was reading this blog on stuff (http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/blogs/game-junkie/8298380/Retails-sales-down-but-Kiwis-still-love-their-games) that has an interesting break down of sales figures in games in new zealand. It appears that we are buying games in higher numbers than ever before. We as new zealanders have really taken to digital distribution as a platform. I find this interesting because of what the root causes could be.

For instance the classicfication system within Australia dictates that physical games that would be imported into New Zealand. This puts the brick and mortar sellers as a disadvantage because the media is still accessable through online services such as steam. A recent example of this would be The Walking Dead by Telltale games. Which was embargoed in Australia and NZ due to its R18 rating but was easially accessable through steam.

This inconveinence in accessablity is exasserbated by the costs increase in oppperating a physical store and providing a physical copy rather that the much more cost effective digital system. However I find it very interesting NZers are such early adopter of the digital means due to the assumption that the buy will have a sufficent internet connection and download cap to accomodate the download which untill recently was rather unheard of in this county.