Nate Hoffelder had quite a scoop on The Digital Reader yesterday. He reports receiving official-looking material from an anonymous source indicating that Barnes & Noble will be launching three e-readers next quarter, not just two. The three readers will include a $139 “Smart Touch” touchscreen e-ink model, and two new Nook Color tablets priced at $249 (referred to as “Encore”) and $349 (listed as “Acclaim”). Hoffelder points out that Smart Touch and Encore are the product names B&N is using for the touchscreen e-ink and 7” Nook Color models now, so “Acclaim” probably represents something new. Hoffelder...

The dichotomy between physical and electronic delivery of media doesn’t just strike the book world. As I’ve noted a few times in the past, computer games have also been moving to electronic delivery, most notably via Valve’s Steam system, but other companies such as GameStop have been trying to roll their own as well. Digital delivery of games can allow game publishers to do some interesting things. For instance, buying any Valve game box in the store includes a free Steam-based on-line version of it that players can download forever even if they lose the retail disks, Also,...

In a related note to the previous story, Engadget points to an NPD report cited by Joystiq on the computer game market noting that nearly half of all computer games sold in 2009 were downloaded via digital distribution networks (21.3 million) rather than bought in boxes from retail outlets (23.5 million). Steam topped the list of top five digital retailers, followed by Direct2Drive and Blizzard.com. In this, the computer game industry joins the music, movie, and of course book industries as digitally-delivered content begins to displace that which is sold or rented more traditionally. However, new GameStop...