Ok, “numbered,” may be an exaggeration of sorts. GameStop isn’t going to close in the next few months, or even years, but I think a trend is growing that will put an end to most of the B&M stores. “What trend could he be speaking of,” you whisper? Downloadable games.

IGN broke the news on how Nintendo has already made 33 million dollars from it’s online content store. Nintendo sells these games at little cost to themselves and doesn’t have to rely on second parties taking a cut. And, while some companies…*cough*Sony *cough*…might need GameStop and other retailers for hardware sales–to the point where GameStop can threaten to stop carrying the system if they release a big downloadable game, i.e. Warhawk–Nintendo hardware sells so well they could just tell a retailer to go fuck themselves and another would quickly step in.

As the cast of 1upYours and N’Gai Croal were saying, companies like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft want nothing more than to end the selling of used games; one sure way to do so is to stop selling physical copies of titles. If Nintendo keeps up the pace they are setting, and continues to do so with their next console, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the next Mario game be a DLC title exclusively. Once that precedent is set, watch out–it’s going down.

Chufmoney