Pachter: “No chance in hell” will games be download-only anytime soon

Talks of games soon being download-only, and so leading to the demise of retail stores has got Wedbush Morgan analyst Michale Pachter vehemently shaking his head in disagreement. “No chance in hell,” he said.

Talks of games soon being download-only, and so leading to the demise of retail stores has got Wedbush Morgan analyst Michale Pachter vehemently shaking his head in disagreement. “No chance in hell,” he said.

In the latest episode of GameTrailers show Pach Attack, Pachter shares his two cents on the matter:

“We are not going to have a mandated download as long as we have any device that is not connected to the Internet.

With PCs you probably have around 95 percent of them connected to the internet. But with the Xbox 360 it’s probably two thirds, the PS3 it might be as high as 85 percent and the Wii, my guess, is below 50 but probably closer to 35%.

So it’s all the guys who are not connected, the 35 percent of Xbox 360 owners and the 65 percent of Wii owners, that are going to keep games from being made mandated downloadable. If you mandate that you are going to eliminate all the customers that aren’t connected to the Internet.”

So what does it take for games to become fully downloadable only? According to him, it won’t be until “90 percent of households have internet connectivity,” which for him wouldn’t be possible until “at least 2020.”

Via [Pach-Attack]