International Digital Entertainment Agency

On October 29, 2008, International Digital Entertainment CEO, Sean Kauppinen, spoke at the GameON: Finance 2.0 Conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The panel entitled "Off the Shelf" also featured Steve Bocksa, Industry Analyst & President, of Pug Pharm Productions and Jeff Tremblay, VP Biz Dev, Frima Studios in a lively discussion about the future of game distribution and business models for games.

Key points included:

• Defining micro-transactions as payments under one dollar and having the psychological effect of not feeling like real money
• Facebook and other social networks can be a powerful tool in getting your game out under digital distribution, but you need to be sure to ensure quality and credibility when "selling" to your network
• The second biggest threat to the game industry behind piracy is the resale business
• Generation Y is not as interested in physically collecting products, but are happy with licensing software
• Issues are on the horizon as content is tied to devices and not generally transferrable