Take a stand, Frictional

[strunz]

Ahemm...

I see you folks seem to appreciate a good joke when you hear one, don't you?
I was only kidding, you see. Of course my brother is not nine years of age. He is six. And when he was four, I forced him to play Doom 3 from the beginnig to its very end in one night. And for he wouldn't miss any detail, I glued his eyeballs to the screen.
For the people who still think I am serious - I am not. I won't let my bro play Amnesia. I would donate that to myself.

But to get back to my original intention: I think by leaving out the option of a physical copy, you also leave out a massive section of customers. If you look around you will not only find a large number of people who emphasise the existence of a retail version (the traditionals and the collectors), but even a larger group who would not even know about a game if it wasn't physical. Many never search beyond their known terrain such as amazon for example, and on amazon you won't find a download only game. You renounce a lot of money if you exclude the retail option completely.

I do not think the future will be download only, at least not the near future. The vast majority of new games is still published on CD and DVD, so this cannot be an appropriate argument these days. If I got that right, Frictional seems to have maid some bad experiences with publishers (or one publisher) regarding Penumbra, because they think they may have been financially cheated. Well, even if this is the case: I think there are other publishers than this one which would be interested and which would act in a better way. And if they do not want to share their profits with a publisher at all, I would keep the download only strategy till the boom phase of Amnesia ceases, and then, still, sign a deal with a publisher (maybe low budget) to skim the unutilised resources. Also if you don't get every cent of the profit - you still make money you would not have otherwise.