There’s a lot of talk these days, mostly led by Microsoft and publishers who hate used game sales, about how digital distribution of games is the wave of the future, and soon all our games will come via download. While this seems like the killing blow for brick-and-mortar retailers, not everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid yet, and at least one EA executive thinks that some companies are a little too quick on the trigger.

According to Jens Uwe Intat, SVP and general manager of publishing for EA Europe, file size restrictions and bandwidth issues will keep games in their physical (currently disc-based) format for at least another 20 years. Games are growing so quickly and have become so large, he says, that only consumers with top-of-the-line Internet connections would be able to handle downloading full games. Besides, the increased size of games means that they are simply too big for digital distribution, as titles are already pushing past 10GB and into spaces unknown, way too much to ask consumers to download and then stick on a hard drive.

"The reason why I’m so convinced is that I’ve always been saying our software developers eat up storage space so much quicker than telcos can build distribution. You can always see technological quantum leaps in terms of digital distribution capacity, it’s all true, but if you see how those guys increase the size of games... it’s just unbelievable.

"I mean, we used to be below 1GB, but we’re now building games that have 8, 9, 10GB - and if broadband distribution is going to allow 10GB to be distributed in half an hour, we’ll have games that are 100GB. Because the graphical resolution increases."

Intat instead sees the current model holding for the foreseeable future, where full games themselves are distributed via physical media, while add-ons and bonus content is made available via download. So from the sounds of things, GameStop employees need not fear for their jobs, and game critics wondering what to do with their review copies of Bratz and Dora the Explorer games need not fear leaving them on the living room shelf for lack of a place to trade them in order to procure slightly less ridiculous gaming fare.