Electronic Arts’ digital downloads are going pretty great guns in the current generation of consoles. At its recent earnings call, the publisher noted how 29 percent of its games were digitally downloaded on Xbox One and PS4.

CFO Blake Jorgensen answered a question regarding the same (as per Seeking Alpha) and noted that, “On full-game downloads, we finished our fiscal 2016 around 24 percent of all of our games. And as we’ve talked about publicly, we lag the industry by one or two points primarily because FIFA is such a large global product. It has huge share in some marketplaces where full-game downloads, due to bandwidth or credit card capabilities, are not – it impacts that business there.”

Jorgensen then clarified that this was only for Xbox One and PS4 titles with PC skewing the ratio. “75 to 80 percent of all PC games are full-game downloads. That pulls the numbers up. We think the industry is going be probably by calendar year end around 30 percent.

“And our internal estimates are around 29 percent for ourselves, once again, slight lag with the industry. But as I said, I think we’re seeing positive trends on all of that, so that’s good.”

What are your thoughts on EA’s growing influence in the digital downloads sphere? Let us know in the comments below.

Game of Thrones will be adapted into a video game series courtesy of The Walking Dead developer Telltale Games, and The New York Times has revealed that sci-fi author Ty Franck, who works as an assistant to author George RR Martin, is consulting on the game. Franck is known for Leviathan Wakes, part of the Expanse series, and is fairly established as an author. Being Martin’s assistant only sweetens the deal.

Regarding Telltale’s reputation, HBO global licensing VP Josh Goodstadt stated that, “We were struck by the sophisticated level of work and high-quality approach to storytelling in all of their games. We quickly recognized that this same level of quality and dedication could be a great complement to the richness of Game of Thrones.”

Game of Thrones is currently slated to release this year and will release in an episodic format. It’s most likely destined for PC and home consoles but we’ll wait to see if it comes to PS4 and Xbox One.

Blizzard Entertainment’s expansion pack for Diablo 3, Reaper of Souls, has managed to sell 2.7 million copies worldwide on PC and Mac according to the publisher. This includes both physical retail copies and digital downloads. Other states include 2.4 million Twitch streams on launch day and players having halted Death more than 1.5 million times in the past 9 days.

Blizzard CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime stated in response that, “With Reaper of Souls, we wanted to emphasize all the things that Diablo gamers have always loved about the series, from the dark gothic setting to the piles and piles of epic loot

“We’re excited to see that players are enjoying the changes we’ve made to the game, and we look forward to achieving our Paragon levels alongside everyone else in the weeks and months ahead.”

Diablo 3 and Reaper of Souls are set to launch on the PlayStation 4 in the coming months. Have you gotten your hands on the game yet? Let us know in the comments what you think of it.

Microsoft Games Studios corporate VP Phil Spencer recently answered a query regarding midnight launches on Twitter. It essentially stated that since midnight launches are a big deal but also a big nuisance, why not just do the same on Xbox Live with digital release?

Spencer responded: “That’s the future we are building towards.” We got our first glimpse of such a future with Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall, which recently launched for the Xbox One and PC in North America. It was quickly available for download in both instances.

If digital releases are launched on midnight more often through Xbox Live, it means many gamers will be able to avoid the horrible conditions of waiting in long lines and tolerating their fellow man to get their favourite release. it also means less chances of shortage of stock.

Hopefully we’ll get closer to said future as the Xbox One and PS4 gain traction. So stay tuned.

It’s no secret that some games on Xbox Live are ludicrously priced compared to their standard retail counterparts. While it can be seen with PS4 titles as well, the main issue is that the era of digital games was to make for cheaper games since manufacturing and distribution costs are cut out.

Responding to a complaint on Reddit about TitanFall’s pre-order incentive – where you get $10 Xbox Live credit for ordering the game (instead of, say, just pricing it for $10 less) – director of programming for Xbox Live Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb responded that, “We are way aware of this and many of the concerns of the community – we have some great stuff planned for Xbox One this year (and beyond.) As soon as we can share some of the goodness…we will.”

He also talked about competitive pricing on Xbox Live and stated that “It is indeed on the agenda” for Microsoft.

What are your thoughts on digital prices on Xbox Live and PSN? Let us know below.

The dust has cleared on the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One and retailer GameStop recently reported a total holiday sales revenue of $3.15 billion across the world, with a 10.2 percent increase in total store sales and a 99.8 percent increase in hardware sales.

CEO Paul Raines stated that, “I am pleased to report that the extensive planning by our entire team over the past year to prepare for the new console launches paid off. Our outstanding execution during the holidays resulted in GameStop securing the number one market share position in the U.S. and in most of the countries in which we operate today.

“GameStop also had the highest software and accessory attach ratio of any retailer for both new consoles. Building off this momentum, we are in an excellent position to drive the global adoption of the next generation of new video game products in 2014.”

Meanwhile, both the Xbox 360 and PS3 saw a 22.5 percent decline software sales. Interestingly, digital sales came in at $207.3 million for a 14.9 percent increase, with mobile sales at $94.8 million. Pre-owned game sales had increased by 7 percent.

In a recent interview with OXM, Phil Spencer, Microsoft Studios corporate Vice President, offered up his perspective on the current trends in the gaming market. He observed that the boom in digital distribution in gaming has given mid-tier games a shot where, at a time when retail was the most relied upon way to get games, they were suffering in the face of the PC indie game boom. He was quoted as stating:

“I think a real saviour for us has been the advent of the digital stores, whether it’s PSN or Xbox Live Arcade. What it’s meant is that studios don’t have to look at retail as the only way that they can sell their content.

“I think five to six years ago, there was a real concern that we were going to lose those mid-tier games because they maybe weren’t games that could scale up to compete with Halo, Call of Duty, or GTA, and there was no other avenue for those games to actually find consumers. A couple things have happened: you’ve seen the advent of [Apple’s] App Store, Android, and large-scale devices where a lot of those developers have gone, and there’s been some great games created for those devices.”

Spencer went on to talk about Xbox’s self-publishing indie development program ID@Xbox: “The indie program that we’re running – Sony’s obviously running an indie program – we’re opening up the stores more on console, and the nice thing is, I think consoles will now start to feel more like the other devices in terms of the breadth of content.

“A unique capability on consoles is to play a game like Ryse; there may have some of that on PC, but most of the PC games are service based, just because the retail market for PC games is a real challenge: to sell a single-player offline game.

“There’s some things that have been successful, like Diablo, but it’s more challenging. I think console can actually manage on both ends of the spectrum, we can put beautiful, long triple-A content on-screen – it’s a unique place for that content – but also embrace the breadth of content that comes from smaller studios and us as publishers, we just have to be aware that both ends of the spectrum are important and can be successful.”

Thoughts? Let us know what you think below.

His study forecast that by 2017, digitally distributed games and gaming services will represent a 34 percent share of total games spend across the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The report also revealed that back in 2008, it was a mere 8 percent across the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Piers believes that publisher ambition to have their games digitally available is one of the reasons behind the increase. “Those titles that have already experimented with digital ‘day and date’ releases alongside boxed versions have enjoyed a small but growing digital share of total sales volume, but IHS predicts that by 2017 new releases could be enjoying up to 18% digital sales depending on geography,” he said in a press release sent to GamingBolt.

Piers also claims that the pricing model, discover-ability and accessibility of digital content will push digital sales. It’s no secret that both Sony and Microsoft are going digital in a big way with Gaikai and Azure cloud technology respectively. Valve has already seen great success with their digital distribution platform Steam, when they reached at all time high of 65 million users recently.

He further believes that “the shift to digital consumption coupled with lower up-front investment in console hardware design and custom components is expected to lay the foundation for stronger profitability for the platform holders across the next generation when compared to the PS3/Xbox 360 consoles.”

Interesting take. We will see how it pans out in the coming years.

All these details come by way of a confirmed Xbox One dev on Reddit (some of you may know him better from here). When a user asked how long it would take for digital games to install, it was pointed out that you can play games while they’re downloading, just like on the PS4. However, according to the dev, “It would depend on the game. I can’t tell you which ones but from what I’ve seen, some could be played after 15%, others had to go to 75%.”

The dev also outlined the ideal home theatre set-up for users. “PC -> X1 -> Receiver -> TV. This is the setup I’ve been using at home. I see no visible lag using the PC via HDMI in. The Xbox will turn on/off both receiver and TV after you go through TV/devices setup. Volume controls on the receiver are available via voice. I have not seen input switching via voice, though that might get added.”

It has also been revealed that the voice commands for Kinect are currently fixed, and you won’t be able to add your own…at least, that’s what the current scenario seems to be. “Currently the voice commands are fixed. I don’t think we’ll implement custom voice commands. I don’t know. Volume control is a preset amount. On my receiver, it goes up or down 1 dB. This might change as we determine other methods.”

In regards to IR codes, the dev stated that, “We have codes for almost every major brand of TVs, AV receivers, cable boxes etc., including different models. Most manufacturers use the same IR code for all their models of a specific type of device. However, there currently isn’t a means for the device to learn new IR codes. I don’t have a list of all types of devices supported but currently, there’s no ability to record new codes.”

The Xbox One will launch on November 22nd across 13 territories worldwide. What are your thoughts on these new details? Let us know in the comments below.

“That’s kind of my personal mission in life these days. If you talk to someone outside of the gaming industry, someone who doesn’t necessarily follow [or] read all the blogs and keep up with the latest news, a lot of them are really unaware of a lot of these games.

“They’ve never heard of them, don’t know that they even exist. So right now, it’s a little bit of a niche audience of people who follow all of these games. But I’m personally convinced that if you get these games into people’s hands and they try them, they’ll be shocked. They’ll be surprised at how good these games are and say, ‘I had no idea you could get these amazing games for $15, $20, $10 sometimes.’

“So I spend all of my time playing indie games; frankly, it’s been a while since I played a full retail game just because there’s so much great stuff out there. That probably says more about me than it does about anything else.”

And that unified account system that has bene requested for the Wii U and 3DS? There’s no update but Adelman stated that Nintendo is “very aware” of the demand for it.