Another industry dev of the veteran variety has spoken up about a need for the industry proper to make the full shift to digital distribution, calling for an end to physical retail copies of games, specifically for consoles, or the "ancient beasts" could be "heading for extinction".

Speaking from his soapbox Blog, Codies co-founder and current CEO of social gaming studio, Kwalee, David Darling, has suggested that the boom of mobile gaming and its digital distribution model, as well as that of the likes of Steam and Facebook, needs to become a priority for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft heading into the next-generation.

"People are already playing more games through digital download than physical media," he wrote. "For instance, Angry Birds has had more than one billion downloads, a sales figure totally beyond what can be achieved by boxed games sold in the likes of Game and GameStop. Since 2008, the sales of console games have been falling each year."

While it might seem odd to compare the success of a puzzle-based social time-waster like Angry Birds to proper console gaming, Darling does bring up a good point about the potential for more affordable gaming should the console big-boys jump on board the digital distribution model in full.

"Digitally distributed games can reach players all around the world quickly, cutting out physical production, warehouses, distributors and retailers," he asserts. "Therefore, it is no longer necessary to charge people huge prices to play video games."

There are other factors ignored on the whole, such as backwards compatibility for the massive libraries of physical games out there from this generation alone, Blu-ray and the basic fact that all three current consoles already do have successful digital distribution components for practically every game released. There's also the point of declining sales presented in his argument, though he fails to consider the GEC as a major contributing factor to this.

There are definitely a lot of solid points raised though, so be sure to check out his post yourself (which is also quite the sales pitch for his new studio), and drop a note in the Comments section with your own thoughts.