The world is moving away from physical purchases, but GameStop argues that there's still room for a brick-and-mortar retailer in the brave land of digital distribution. The numbers back the retailer up: NPD Group reports that sales of Xbox Live Arcade point cards are often the best-selling accessory in gaming, month after month. We spoke with Shawn Freeman, GameStop's SVP/GM of Digital, about why customers come into a physical store to buy a digital product.

He also spoke about plans that would link your Xbox Live account to a kind of GameStop ID, so purchases of digital content made in the store would be immediately available on your console. Online stores are nice, but GameStop wants to show that customers still love a salesperson.

Why physical location is an advantage

While many of our readers are comfortable buying content online, GameStop's massive success with selling point cards speaks volumes about the behavior of the broader market.

"We... have been a huge seller of those points in the marketplace," Freeman told Ars. "As I understand it, we're neck and neck, or we sell even more, than they sell directly through Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network. Which speaks to our access to gamers who care about playing those games."

It goes even further than point cards. You can now go into a GameStop and buy cards that give you access to map packs, or to Xbox Live Arcade games themselves. Freeman shared with us GameStop's ambitious plans to deliver that content directly to users: "Today you pick the card up off the rack that's associated with that map pack, we ring it up as part of your transaction in the store, and then we give you the code that allows you go home and [access the content]."

"Ultimately, we want to reduce even more of that friction, so when you buy that map pack in our store, we're going to be able to associate your Xbox profile with your GameStop profile, and then automatically push that to your download queue." When you arrive home and turn on your system, the newly puchased content downloads directly; or, if you keep your system on all the time, the content is already there waiting for you.

This isn't a pie in the sky idea; Freeman told Ars that this is something GameStop is actively working on with partners.

The value of the salesman

"We're the ones that do a great job of helping consumers understand what their opportunities and options are for playing games," Freeman said. While the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network are great platforms, they may not be the best way to discover games or the ways to play them.

"By providing an opportunity for our sales associate to sell the games themselves to consumers, we can drive more of those sales," he said. He then gave what he calls the "classic example," where a customer comes in for the newest Call of Duty game and GameStop can sell the map pack or add-on content as a part of the same purchase. The person selling the game can talk up the digital content, and Freeman says this removes some of the "friction" of buying the content. You don't have to go home, buy points, and then buy the content; you just add a digital download it to your existing purchase.

Perhaps soon, that content will then be pushed directly to your console.

Freeman bristled slightly at the idea that selling this content through his stores would cut into Microsoft's or Sony's bottom lines.

"I would argue that we're not hurting their bottom line. If we're increasing their sales, we're helping their bottom line," he said. "Our view is that when you look at all the different ways people buy content digitally, that experience and that discovery experience is key to realize that opportunity... if we do a good job, that's going to continue to bring value to our publishers and our platform partners, because we're going to continue to drive more sales for them."