Despite big AAA titles doing an increasingly larger part of their sales digitally (68% of Elden Ring's launch sales were digital in the UK, for instance), there is still value in retail for mainstream IPs, Daedalic's head of publishing Jonas Hüsges says.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz at Gamescom today, Hüsges talked of the importance of meeting the audience where it is with its upcoming The Lord of the Rings: Gollum title – and that also means in store, where you can potentially attract a new audience who won't know the game necessarily but will recognise the IP.
"With a mainstream big IP, you want to go through shelves, and we hear positive feedback from retailers as well," he said. "They understand that this is a brand that they [can] put front and centre in their stores and that will resonate with people who just walk about, because they immediately understand what they're getting and what the product is."