INTERVIEW: STEVE NIX, GAMESTOP [BIOGRAPHY]
NAME Steve Nix
CURRENT JOB General Manager of Digital Distribution, GameStop Corp.
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY 2006 – 2011 id Software
(Director of Business Development for three years, Director of Digital Platforms for one year)
2001 – 2006
Ritual Entertainment, developer of Counter- Strike: Condition Zero, SiN and others
(Chief Executive Officer) 1999 – 2000
Mobile payments firm
AnywhereYouGo.com (Chief Financial Officer)
There may be cases where we have some exclusive content but I don’t think that we’re ever going to actually have any primary exclusives. However, we’re being pitched exclusives by developers more and more and more. It has surprised me, but at least half of the developer conversations we’re having are studios asking me what we want as a retailer in order to take exclusivity – they’re interested in what channels we can give them in-stores in return. The other interesting change is that when we talk to our publishing partners, there’s a marked change in attitude around PC. It used to be just ‘What are you doing on the Xbox? What are you doing on the PS3?’ And the PC was just an afterthought. The big difference now is I’m usually in the meetings or someone from the Impulse team is and from the very beginning it’s ‘What are you doing on the PC? Tell us all about the PC version of the game.’ The industry is asking what it can do to talk to gamers about the PC version as early as possible and make it successful on equal footing to the console versions. That’s a totally new conversation.
“
www.mcvuk.com
Whatever happens in digital,
GameStop is going to invest, adapt and shift. Steve Nix, GameStop
But a company like GameStop will benefit from that halo effect that comes from there being a lot of competitors helping establish and grow a space. Yeah and GameStop has pushed to be active in that space. So as well as digital distribution or cloud streaming we’ve got Kongregate, the world’s largest Flash gaming site. Digital will continue to evolve, and none of us know where it’s really going to land. But we see strength in PC digital, we see strength in our Flash game business, cloud is a recent development and we’ll watch that too. Whatever does happen GameStop is going to make investments and adapt and shift. We’re not averse to more acquisitions; we’re actively out there and looking. Chris Petrovic, who runs our Digital Ventures division, is a very busy man, always looking at areas that we might move in to. Our plan is that we’re going to make sure that whatever the market does, we’re prepared.
August 12th 2011 17
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