Xbox LIVE Games Sell As Well As Retail Games

An Australian Microsoft representative has said Xbox LIVE games are as successful as conventional retail games.

The unnamed representative told Kotaku (via Softpedia) that Microsoft's Winter of Arcade (or Summer of Arcade, depending on which hemisphere you live in), performed extremely well, with Shadow Complx commanded an impressive 200,000 downloads in one week.  This figure would have meant that, if Shadow Complex had been a retail release and had done as well, would have come in within the top ten of Australia's all format charts, and probably topped the dedicated 360 chart.

But it's not only the recent "Season" of Arcade games which have done well in Australia.  The folks down-under seem to have a hankering for XBLA and the Microsoft rep goes on to say that titles like Worms 2 and Battlefield 1942 would have topped the all format charts when released, outselling even Wii Fit.

Not only is distribution easier, but because of the lack of packaging, store space and fuel getting to the stores to pick up the titles, it means studios have a huge profit margin, making their title more appealing.  And in fairness, it's no surprise Battlefield did so well, it's incredibly good fun and well executed.  The issue now is whether governments can change the infrastructure to help support and distribute titles digitally.

Using Australia as an example, it seems that digital distribution is certainly not a form of distribution to be snuffed at, especially after certain publishers commented that retail has proved better than digital distribution.  Digital distribution was tipped to save the games industry during the economic downturn as well as saving the Western gaming industry, and seems to have done well for Microsoft so far.

The question is, if your internet was fast enough, would you download games straight to your hard-drive?