"I think what's interesting to us is that consumers have a pretty strong preference in this," said CEO Paul Raines. "And I think we've seen this play out in a variety of ways over the past few years. Consumers prefer those physical bundles, because they know that that disc has value in the trade-in program at GameStop . So we choose not to participate in the digital bundles."GameStop already began this practice last month with the release of Madden 16. Instead of carrying the Xbox One digital Madden bundle, the retailer worked with its "partners" to offer a free physical game with the purchase of a console.
"We expect that if a game is provided as a promotional item in a hardware bundle, GameStop will see more of these physical offers than digital pack-ins on upcoming third-party releases," said COO Tony Bartel.
He later added, "I think we articulated in the first quarter that we have made it clear with our publishing partners that our preference is that we sell -- obviously, GameStop 's preference is -- we sell things at full price and provide great value through our trade program and that we have physical discs." Brian is an Editor at IGN. You can follow him @albinoalbert on Twitter.