With all the fuss about digital distribution recently, you'd think that the introduction of online only content will cut into retail's bottom line. Not so, says Nintendo Europe boss Laurent Fischer.

Our favourite George Clooney lookalike spent some time chatting to Develop and the issue of WiiWare came into play, with the suggestion that the service will have, or already has had a negative impact on traditional retail stores.

Fischer, in fact, believes that WiiWare benefits brick and mortar outlets by introducing people into smaller games (who would then 'level up' to disc based games we imagine) and that the experimental nature of the digital service means that nothing crosses over to something that could be released physically.

"We know from all our experience that what people enjoy on the services makes their appetites for playing games far bigger. That’s the first benefit to retail. The other way is that WiiWare is a laboratory. What we know is that some of the games that are – you could say ‘tested’ through this platform." Fischer than states that through this testing small developers may tackle normal retail channels.

The Nintendo Europe head was keen to stress that traditional retail remains the core of the company's business, and that download services are "complementary".