Larian could do very well through digital distribution.
Yes. Maybe. But only in those areas were credit cards are common. Or paypal or so.
Here in Germany, for example, people are still relatively conservative. That's why Germany is still one of the biggest if not THE biggest PC market in the world - whereas everywhere else it's already gone the way of the console.
Which also means that credit cards and other payment methods are still not *that* common - at least not as much as in other countries.
Germany has still a huge boxed market. And UI'd only want it.
Many people who wanted to play both Drakensang games were incredibly annoyed (at least they expressed it so at RPGWatch) that both games are ONLY available in digital format ( = commercial downloads) in North America and in other non-european parts of the world.
With the digital distribution on the rise, a printed manual becomes luxury - it becomes something where people say : "Oh, wow, a PRINTED MANUAL !!!"
There are two ways :
- way of the mass market
- way of the specialized or/and high-quality market
An in-between might be possible, but I rarely see it. Middle-tier companies often do that.
