The scientists over at the GameStop Research Center of Self-Benefiting Claims — GSRCSBC for short — have been working hard on a study regarding the viability of digital distribution. Their findings are that services like Steam, Xbox Live Arcade and Impulse won’t “make any real waves” until 2014. Don’t they know the world is ending in 2012, come on GameStop get with the times!

In all seriousness, GameStop’s findings are asserted as one of the most thorough studies of its kind to date. With that being said it does strike us as being odd considering almost all of the aforementioned services are increasing in popularity as they continue to mature. There is a point to be made that consoles are still lacking ample amounts of storage to support downloads of full games. So there is some merit to what GameStop is saying as consoles may not support that kind of storage until the next generation which may in fact happen before 2014, but certainly not any time soon.

It’s still a very interesting claim since the PC platform is embracing digital distribution and continues to increase in popularity. As storage space continues to get cheaper and our broadband quality increases, digital distribution is the natural progression for gamers to buy and receive their games. It’s only a matter of time, whether or not it happens before 2014 is yet to be determined.