Boxed product "to become a marketing exercise" - Bidaux

The founder and CEO of digital consulting agency ICO Partners, Thomas Bidaux, has told GamesIndustry.biz that while boxed product will always exist, it will become little more than a marketing exercise for the very core gamers.

Speaking in an interview last week, Bidaux - the founder of NCsoft's European presence before setting up ICO Partners - also explained his belief that there will be a blurring between social and traditional games - and that one of the key challenges for developers will be learning to bridge the gap between the two.

"I think that physical distribution will always exist," he said. "It's just going to become marginal. It's going to become a marketing exercise, it's going to be collector's editions, something for collectors to have physical objects and everything's going to continue to move digital.

"The other thing that's going to happen in my opinion is the distinction between console and PC is going to be blurred with social games and iPhone games. Everything's going to merge in some way and become something so games will be connected. How long it's going to take, I don't know. It might be a long process because we all need to learn how to develop different things.

"Whether you are a physical developer and you need to understand other aspects of your work, you know, real time games, things like that. If you are a real time game developer and you don't know anything about social gaming you need to understand how different platforms work. The learning curve is steep for everybody, but it's going to happen eventually."

The full interview with Thomas Bidaux is available now.