One of the things I routinely see on-line when they hear about something new about Impulse is someone commenting “I wish they’d all just consolidate under Steam.” In fact, as Impulse has become increasingly successful, the cry has gotten louder.
So strong is Steam’s fan base at this point that one of the most common comments about Impulse on third-party forums is the desire by some that it didn’t exist and that everything was just on Steam.
I admire Valve on two levels. First, I admire their excellence in what they make. I like companies that strive for the highest quality possible in what they produce. Second, I admire Valve’s business practices. They are incredibly effective, competent, and adaptive. In short, Valve is a fantastic company.
I’m a professional zealot. My tendency to get behind the best technology has led me to be, at various times, an OS/2 zealot, an OpenDoc zealot, and yes, even a Valve zealot (Source engine).
But I’ve also been around long enough to know that you don’t want one player calling all the shots. The companies we love today may not be so loved later on.
People routinely give me a hard time because I like Electronic Arts a lot. How is that possible? Because to me, when I think of Electronic Arts I think of Archon, MULE, Seven Cities of Gold, Starflight, and Summer Games.
When I was an OS/2 zealot, the up and coming star was Microsoft. Its fans helped ensure that Windows, not OS/2, became the standard OS. For many people today, it’s hard to imagine Microsoft as the fanboy favorite – the company that could do no wrong – the company that would never do anything “evil”.
Now, we live in an industry absolutely dominated by Microsoft and Electronic Arts. Its fanboys got their way. Is there anything wrong with that? You tell me.
Today, the pattern repeats itself. Steam is doing phenomenally well. It has fans that actively wish that competition would just go away in the name of “standards” (whatever that means).
And yet, even though Impulse is just an up-and-comer, the competition has already helped consumers. Before the “Impulse Weekend Buys” it was relatively rare to see regular organized major sales on Steam. Now we get them every weekend.
I would like to think that we’ve had some impact on people’s awareness that you don’t need nasty DRM to be successful.
I think Impulse’s focus on trying to encourage one price, worldwide in local currency right out of the gate has made some impact too.
I think Impulse's very fast download speeds have helped encourage competing services to keep increasing their bandwidth capacity.
At the very least, Impulse’s growing success, I think, is something most people can agree has been very beneficial to consumers.
Steam’s most successful venture yet, Steamworks, has helped Steam get an increasingly firmer hold on the market. In my opinion, Steamworks is 90% copy protection, 10% game-related features. I know that publishers are looking at Steamworks as a replacement to SecuROM for protecting games.
The problem is that Steamworks requires the user to have a Steam account and Steam installed to use it – even if you buy it at retail or through a third party like Direct2Drive. I think that’s the basic strategy for Steamworks -- give developers a bunch of “free” features that they used to have to pay for (copy protection, DRM, GameSpy type stuff) with the only catch is that the user has to become a Steam user and have Steam installed. As a result, something like Dawn of War 2, for instance, won’t be on Impulse.
Even with the case of Steamworks, competition has helped here too though, since Stardock is producing Impulse Reactor to compete with Steamworks. Impulse Reactor doesn’t require Impulse (the client) to even be installed to work.
Steamworks, obviously, has a head start and publishers have been following THQ’s lead by setting up with Steamworks even when it means they’re distributing a third party store with their game. After all, right now, Steam has the numbers.
Based on the #s I hear from publishers, Impulse, which has only been out for 6 months, has already become #2 in terms of actual units sold on a given title. But Steam still has a massive lead. Obviously, if we can’t even carry certain big name titles because they've hooked in Steamworks, the competitive trend will reverse.
And while some people might very much like seeing there be only one option, especially if that option comes from such a cool company like Valve, they may not be considering the long term ramifications.
For example, last weekend, Steam and Impulse both had sales on Titan Quest. Steam had it for $7.99, Impulse had it for $3.99. Neither I assume knew the other was going to have a sale on it. But that sort of competition is good for consumers.
Competition is good for consumers. It’s also good for companies. I’m a Steam user. I enjoy watching it evolve and improve over time. But I am also thankful that there are still alternatives to it. Because as much as people love Valve today, I still remember how much everyone loved EA and Microsoft in their day too. Competition keeps companies dynamic and consumer friendly.
Update:
Reading through the comments I see some people turning it into an Impulse vs. Steam discussion (i.e. Impulse rulez! No, Steam rockz!).
This isn't mean as a Steam vs. Impulse discussion. What it is supposed to be is to make people aware of the long history in which fans have rooted for the up-and-comer (whether it be EA in its day or Microsoft later and Google today) and how perceptions change when said companies dominate.
There are plenty of people out there that with that everything would just "standardize" on iPods and iTunes. And even as an iPod and iTunes user, I am glad there's Amazon.com selling MP3s.
For the record, I use Steam every day. I like it a lot. The question isn't which is better (right now, if I had to choose one client, I'd use Steam because of its superior community features and game library -- how many CEOs would say that publicly about the "competition"?). The objective is to remind users that competition is always a good thing even when you love a particular vendor (whether it be Valve, Stardock, whoever).
It's never a good idea to explicitly wish for a single source. Some people in the comments area have said "Of course no one wants a monopoly". But I can assure them that yes, there are lots of people and companies who would like just that because a single source is seen to streamline things.
We expect Impulse to exceed 1 million users before Demigod even ships. So suffice to say, it is doing well. It's nowhere near Steam's user base but then again, Impulse has only been out 6 months.
The point is, Impulse's existence and success shouldn't be seen as an "inconvenience" to consumers but rather as a way to ensure that consumers continue to have choices.
Steam and Impulse at a glance:
www.steampowered.com
www.impulsedriven.com
Related articles:
Stardock mentioned by name by the Michigan governor in the state of the State address
Impulse Phase 3 preview
Stardock prepares to open up second game studio
Stardock's Sins of a Solar Empire top selling PC strategy game of 2008
there is no exclusivity as long as steam and impulse are running on the same platform... saying that a company should let its competitor sell their products is silly. It is not like impulse prevents you from running steam or vice versa. Just because kroger is the only store who carries the "kroger brand" foods doesn't mean that the market is divided...
Now if steam / impulse refused to run if the other was installed, or were selling platforms that couldn't run each other games, then you would have an issue. When the ipod only plays songs you bought from itunes, you have a problem. If the ipod played all songs from all stores than there is no reason to consolidate music stores, and you can buy each song directly or from a single distributer.
Steam is already shit and Impulse seems to be following soon.
Steam came up with the crappy idea that 1$ equals 1€ a few month ago.Now i saw the SINS:Entrenchment advertisement that says: $9.95 / €9.95 / £7.95
In other Words US citizens pay $9,95, british citizens pay $11,36(+Changing fees) and Europeans even pay $12,59(+Changing fees) for the exact same product. Jay fun!!
To be honest it could be worse. EA charges for Red Alert 3 in Germany around 54€($68,39) and sells it at the same time for $30 in the USA. Are they insane? It is much cheaper to order a (real DVD) copy on almost the other side of the world!!!
Uh and i'got another reason why steam and Impulse suck!
My IE is fucked up. Even worse than Microsoft intended. It won't install Shockwave, Java or Flash-plugins. No problem at all for me as i would never dare using this steaming pile of crap anyway. At least that is what i thougt. Now i must learn that Steam and Impulse both utilise the flash-player that comes with IE instead of the version of the default browser(Firefox in my case). That way the Middle frame of steam and almost the whole "home"-page from impulse are empty on my machine. I cannot use the online shop or browse the games. The search does not work as well in impulse.
At least i can start the games...for now.
It is hardly the fault of Impulse or Steam that your IE is messed up and not fully updated.
Until you fix the problems on your end with IE, know that the Explore tab of Impulse simply takes you here (http://impulsedriven.com/store.aspx). So you can still browse the store in Firefox or any other internet browser, if you'd like.
Thx, but i already know that. Thats how i bought the games i own now. (Its the same with steam)The consequence is that i am forced to use two programms that have no advantages for me and are ugly to look at.
http://www.edge-online.com/features/valve-are-games-too-expensive#expensivegames
Valve (STEAM!) says games are too expensive. Besides being "good news", that they are thinking in those lines and have the figures to back it up - does anyone else find it hilarious that they are trying to profile themselves as defenders of low price when in fact Steam has higher prices on ALL their games?
Hypocricy. Maybe I can spell it, maybe I can't. But it certainly smells.
See, there is this misconception that you need to USE IE for it to put you at risk, that couldn't be less true... viruses and malicious programs can make calls to IE and utilize it to harm your system even if you are using only firefox... that is why it is important to update IE even if you are NOT using it.
I am curious about the europe and england price though, is it due to higher taxes perhaps? Or just to "simplify" prices?
Indeed. Especially when they sell games for the same numerical value in Euros as they do in American Dollars (i.e a game that costs 50 US dollars in NA costs 50 Euros in Europe).
*edit* Replying to Heavenfall.
Kalypso sets the prices for Entrenchment in the regions they cover, not us.
Thye do though. They deliver updates.
True...
That is yet another problem developing. In the past Programms like steam were a good source for unlocalised games. I never play the localised versions as they are mostly buggy(Text boxes too small), listlessly syncronised and ridiciously censored. Furthermore is it a fun way to learn english to play games in their "native" Language.
Now you only get localised versions of all games on steam. Theoretical it is possible to select a language but in many cases that has no effect at all.
LOL, then get firefox like everyone else.
if you install Ie, then its already screwed up, .
I haven't had much experiance at all with steam or impulse, but I'm certain that the basic tenants of capitalism work in the gaming industry. In the last 15 or so years, the volume of companies producing and publishing games has dropped like a rock. It's pretty obvious I think that the overall value for a gaming dollar has dropped just as fast and just as far. Games now are about twice as expensive as they used to be, and they bring half (or less) real meat to the table. (I'm looking at you Halo, GTA, F.E.A.R. Madden,) The "big title" games are produced almost to the title in cookie cutter mode. The groundbreaking games are now so far apart you don't really have to make a decision between A or B, because B isn't coming out til next spring(fall). When I make a purchase now, I expect disappointment. You can't blame the "ramp up" of technology, because that's not a new tune. You can't blame gamers, because gamers are paying more and getting less. I don't blame EA or any of the other big companies, because they do what players do. They farm loot at the l33t spawns. ( Sims r teh mad UBER ) The problem is a lack of competition. Competition breeds conflict, which feeds creativity, which fuels quality. Competition isn't just good, it's required. Competition is what we are looking for when we buy a game.
Steam does not let me purchase games in their store because I am in one place and my money comes from another. Impulse does. Win for Impulse.
I have that problem with lots of suppliers.
I live in Ireland, in the European Union. But I am one of those "mobile professionals" that all the tech companies are courting.
But for some reason those same companies do not expect a "mobile professional" to be very mobile at all and many have a problem with my address being Irish and my credit cards being registered in Ireland but issued by a German bank.
Some banks have that problem too. For Citibank for example the idea of a customer moving within the European Union seems to be some sort of violation of the basic principles of physics or something like that.
this reminds me when sony shut down lik sang hard (by suing them in every country they operated in, at once, to bankruptcy) because they were selling japanese PSP and games (untranslated) in the US and europe
Maybe steam has changed, I haven't run a game tied to it for some time, but in the past the only way you could fire up a steam game, or a Valve game, was for steam to be running, and to me, that simply is not acceptable.
I'm all for digital/online distribution until it gets to be intrusive or "controlling."
I also happen to pay for my software, and I understand that companies want to protect their intellectual property, but I get tired of getting treated like a criminal when I'm a paying customer.
grrr E:TW is tied to steamworks, when will steam learn that having to actually register online before you can play is not fun
Still is.
This is only half the story. If you read early supreme court intellectual property decisions (any IP law book will include them, probably available online too) you'll see the supreme court has said repeatedly that IP laws (copyright, trademark, patent, trade secrets) have the goal of balancing 2 interests:
1. as you say, the interest in the author to create his work. Why go through all that effort to write a story if the moment you show it to someone w/more resources he's allowed to go out and produce copies of your story and sell it for profit, leaving you in the dust. The fact that the author can make money to reinburse his cost and hopefully make a profit is his incentive, and the government needs to protect this right in order to protect his incentive to create in the first place. But its to benefit us all, so that we can all partake of his creation, by securing his incentive to act.
2. the opposing interest is society's interest on the whole in having more new IP works out there. Innovation. Thus, copyrights/patents/trademarks are all limited. Copyrights are limited in time. Thus, you can re-write shakespeare and not have to pay royalties to anyone. But if you change it at all, you get a new copyright on your new and innovative changes to the story you made, so I couldn't copy your copy, even if the underlying work is still copyright free, though I could still also rewrite shakespeare on my own, I just couldn't copy your new changes to it. We want, at some point, these ideas that are being protected by the various IP laws to become free to the public to experiment with and improve upon, giving us all the benefit all the new creations in the marketplace. To get a patent you have to submit a working model or blueprints detailed enough to allow an expert in the field to make their own, and what you submit becomes available to teh public (this is why some people would rather partake of trade secret laws rather than rely on a patent). Once the patent runs out, not only are people free to impinge your patent, they have the blue prints on exactly how to do so, which helps foster competition and more importantly - innovation.
If you have too much of #1, you get a stranglehold on innovation, a chilling effect against new ideas. You get kids making star wars mods for UT getting sued by lucasarts and shut down, so no star wars mods for any of us, no fan fiction, no spin-offs, nothing even remotely similar to anything star wars, ever. That sort of thing. If you have too much of #2, you lose the incentive people have to put the time and resources necessary into making anything in the first place, so you again have a chilling effect. Too much of either is bad.
Unfortunately, today, we've been slowly losing sight of #2, in our courts, as companies like disney use their lobbying strength to do things like carve out exceptions for corporations (giving them longer copyright periods than individuals) and such, because they don't want mickey mouse to become public domain. This really hurts the country in which this happens, because then person A in your country who comes up w/a good idea can't pursue it because of an overly long IP interest held by some company which prevents him from acting upon his idea, while in a competing country, person B is legally allowed to pursue the same idea because in that country the IP protection has expired w/in a reasonable time frame, and thus the product becomes made in the competing country, and profits and jobs go there as well, even though person A came up w/the idea first in your country. Nowadays, in this world economy, I'd say there is even more weight on interest #2 above than when this balancing test was first put forth by the supreme court. If you don't balance your IP laws w/#2 in mind, your neighboring country might, and over time they will become the home of comparitively more innovation while you slowly fall behind.
<snip>
Thanks for reminding me to purchase Entrenchment Have a link to this ad you mentioned? I got charged SEK 87,40 which is exactly USD 9.95 according to the Firefox Exch plugin anyway. (purchased just a few minutes ago)
Also, what changing fees are you referring to?
The real question is, how much is that in zimbabwe dollars?
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
9.95 US Dollar = 372,694,931 Zimbabwe Dollar
9.95 Zimbabwe Dollar (ZWD) = 0.00000027 US Dollar (USD)
as per: http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic
never liked steam...hellish program
SmegInThePants, that is going into HOW copyright OPERATES...
But its GOAL was only one... to further innovation and advance society.
It did so by balancing the two factors you described. By going completely out of balance now towards the "rights" of the creator, it now stifles creation instead of encouraging it.
The ad is here on this page https://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/store.aspx near the bottom
Most banks around here charge 1,5% extra if you use your credit card in countrys with a foreign currency.
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