Why I Love Steam December 29, 2008
Posted by raxdakkar in digital distribution, videogames.add a comment
If you haven’t been keeping up with gaming news over the holidays, you may have missed the Steam store’s massive post-holiday sale. Everything in their online store is on sale, particularly Valve games; if you haven’t played the Half-Life 2 series, the multiplayer masterpieces Teamfortress 2 and Left 4 Dead, or 2007’s best game Portal, then you don’t have much of an excuse not to get the complete Valve catalogue for 75$. The incredible deals being offered here crystallizes my favorite part of the Steam Store: it isn’t static. Bundles, weekly deals, free mods and demos have been offered throughout the stores lifetime. My initial fear about online stores and digital distribution was the fact that their would no longer be a huge need for stores to sell things at a discount. Their isn’t shelf space to worry about and exclusivity deals could easily bring in the necessary customers. Valve appears to just enjoy rewarding its many fans by offering new deals every weekend (I grabbed the original Half Life for 99¢) and by adding new functionality to the Steam platform for free. I myself am deciding between grabbing Multiwinia, the complete Civilization 4 series, and World of Goo; for 50$, I might just have to grab them all.
Demigod Exclusive to Stardock’s Impulse Download Service April 12, 2008
Posted by raxdakkar in digital distribution, internet, technology, videogames.add a comment
What’s the best way to gain support for your new digital distribution platform? With an exclusive title of course! That is why Stardock’s new Impulse service will be the only place you can get Chris Taylor’s new RTS/RPG hybrid, Demigod, which Gas Powered Games hopes to have in beta by this summer.
The service, which will be similar in many ways to Valve’s Steam, intends to have everything that users of the aforementioned service now expect: Friends lists, game scheduling, Xbox 360 like achievements, and of course digital game downloads. Stardock intends for Impulse to have “equivalent game content as Direct2Drive and Steam by end of year.”
The biggest advantage Impulse hopes to have over a service like Steam is its very user friendly DRM scheme. Similar to Stardock’s recently released critical and commercial success, Sins of a Solar Empire, games on Impulse will not require a disc or an internet connection like Steam. Simply buy the game and play it on your terms (and most likely get your updates/patches using your serial key). Sounds like Steam may finally get some real competition on the PC.
