In a recent financial conference call, Take-Two Interactive made it clear that brick and mortar was still a profitable distribution method, dubbing it the “channel for the foreseeable future,” but downloadable was noted as a brilliant companion. One so viable, it seems, that all future Take-Two titles will have some sort of downloadable component. Call it a lesson learned from the first Grand Theft Auto IV expansion.

“It’s clear that retail is the channel for the foreseeable future,” company CEO Bryan Feder explained, according to VG247. “Nonetheless, there is a download component to a lot of our games, and there’ll continue to be a download component.”

“The games live online and they live at retail: they live at both. Whether that’s download first, retail second, or retail first download second, or some combination of the two, that’s an area that we’re going to experiment with because we’re innovating in that area," Feder said.

Experimentation is happening this fall. Take-Two is set to publish a Grand Theft Auto IV downloadable content compilation disc that includes the first expansion, “The Lost and Damned,” as well as the second, “The Ballad of Gay Tony.”

“And it’s likely to change from title to title, but everything is going to have a download component, needs to have a download component. It’s one of the key lessons [of 'The Lost and Damned']. We’ll see how GTA in the retail SKU performs; we’re actually pretty optimistic about it.”

We love downloadable content, especially when it's done right, meaning it wasn't something stripped from the game for the sake of stripping it from the game. Rockstar North nailed DLC with "The Lost and Damned," so it'll be interesting to see if we'll get thrilling side missions for BioShock 2 or the usual map packs and game modes. Our guess is both.

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