PS3 Digital Version of Mass Effect 2: PSN Experiment A Success

John Riccitiello, CEO of publishing giant EA, says its experimental day-and-date digital and retail release of the PlayStation 3 version of Mass Effect 2 has been a success.

Speaking at last week’s Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco, Riccitiello said that the digital release of Mass Effect 2, did well. The digital version of Mass Effect 2 accounted for a “double-digit percentage” of sales, despite EA tight lips to market the release.

“Sony had never done a day-and-date release,” he said. “They were very cautious about their infrastructure so it was mostly a technology test.

“This was really more about proving it can be done than it was proving what the opportunity would be. So an unmarketed game one year after the original was done on the Xbox and the PC, we released the PS3 and managed to do very, very well with it.”

Riccitiello went on to explain that simultaneous digital and physical releases of games are not the norm because of hardware manufacturer retail policies, saying: “They have got to manage both selling boxes at retail, and it's generally a pretty thin margin business. And so they basically negotiate and leverage shelf space on the promise of making retail margin on software.”