Impulse - Acquired by GameStop

Brad's reason "I don't want a larger company" begs either Apr 1st joke or a pile of $$$$ from gamestop.

Wouldn't take it too seriously. Stardock needed a cash injection, pure and simple.

Anyway, this is just GameStop admitting the digital download market is way too large for any retailer to ignore. That's "good news" for PC gamers in a kind of diagonal way. It should also mean Impulse's catalog will expand rapidly with GameStop's backing. Good news so far.

What changes they make (maybe make Impulse client more like Steam DRM?) remains to be seen.
 
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Call me a pessimist, but I'm betting this will change the character of Impulse. Why I like Impulse is the fact that it has carved out a market niche for itself by offering indie games and lesser-known titles from smaller studios.

I suspect Gamestop, for reasons mentioned above that bespeak the company's less-than-sterling integrity, will try to become the next Steam, which doesn't particularly interest me. I can get crappy mainstream titles on the ever-shrinking shelves of their crappy stores and the even-crappier Best Buy, at least at this particular moment before PC shelf space vanishes altogether.

I suppose someone would fill that void eventually, since digital distribution is relatively inexpensive, but today I rather like Impulse.
 
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This doesn't make any sense to me. Stores exist(ed) because people need(ed) a place to go buy stuff, and the makers of the stuff for the most part couldn't afford to have their own stores. But if you're going to the web to buy something by just paying with a credit card and downloading it, what value does a middle man like Gamestop add to this process? Why can't we just download from the publisher, or even the devs? Bandwidth is cheap as dirt, turnkey storefront solutions are cheap as dirt, I don't understand this at all. Is it just because people aren't going to know where to find the games if they're not all together on a major website? Like people aren't going to just google "Divinity 2" or something?

What value? There are many people who do not shop online or very little shopping online. To them it is value.

Add to that the amount of people who go in to the store that will see your product. With steam its the amount of people looking at steam's storefront. Its free advertising and every sale counts.

EA games has its own storefront. You already have a publisher selling but you didn't know that (or you might yet regardless many others don't) and there's where the power of recognition comes into play.

If EA sells the games on steam they get more sales not only from those wanting to buy it on steam but from those who don't know and see it in steams store and click to find out what it is. Same thing with going to gamestop. You go in and see and say, "hey what's that."

Hence, sell everywhere and people buy everywhere. Just because you or I don't doesn't mean there's not a lot who do. More places you sell the more money you make. Its bad business to limit it. You want your product everywhere.

A lot of people will not google a game becuase they do not know about the game. You cannot search for an exact game you do not know. Yes, you can go to a large digital game publisher and look through what they have which brings it back to the main point. Going into the gamestop store to see what new games there are or will be as many many people do not shop online even in 2011.
 
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Like I said in the other thread I like the competition for Steam. Someone needs to take on that juggernaut. I do worry about Gamestop's annoying tactics like retailer exclusive DLC and such, but Steam has been doing that stuff lately too so it's not like it matters.
 
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I tried to buy something from Gamestop recently because they had digital distribution for something not on steam but I could not actually buy what I wanted it just wouldn't let me put it in the cart and buy it. Also they use trymedia to actually do the distribution and having to sign in (or try to sign in) to another company to do a purchase online is strange and sucks. I ended up going to Impulse and buying it there and it was extremely straight forward and I wish I tried it first.

I think this is a bad deal for customers ultimately but I suspect Stardock is hurting bad after Elemental tanked and this keeps it afloat.
 
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Well, I've never bought anything from gamestop... Issues like selling old as new can't happen with downloads, though.

I personally didn't like Impulse because it defaults to opening on startup and with random promotion pop-ups which alt-tab you from games. Because I just removed them directly from startup and not through the apps options It was reappearing every boot and appeared to me to be behaving like malware. Was all good after I used the options to disable.

Apparently Stardock broke even with Elemental and are going into debt rebooting it into something that doesnt suck a lot. I preordered Elemental, being a GalCiv2 fan, and I was so unimpressed with the first release I almost thought it was a personal insult. Really WTF stuff like being able to wear unlimited rings. I mean i've made RPG character generators and something like that shouldn't make it into beta let alone retail. And, fark, what does that say about the testers too.

As for Steam? Its come a loooong way since I was forced onto it to play CS:Source. Hell, I like it now. And until they're under new management the monopoly worry is totally groundless.
 
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They do have some nice bargains at Gamestop, but they recently eleminated nearly all PC bargains … More signs of a shift towards consoles …

I bought "Neopets Puzzle Adventure" on March, 31st for 5 Euros there, and it plays much like Puzzle Quest (it's made by the same developer), only with a different "bord game" this time (which I found disappointing).

If I wait long enough, they even sell CEs for a reduced price … ;)

Oops, okay, enough OT … ;)

Edit : What I find a bit diturben that there are practicall NO specialized games retail shops here anymore ... Except for consoles, of course ... The next one which has relatively good catalogue of PC game is about 30 Kilmetres away from here ... (A lesser one is in my town as well, though ...)
 
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As far as i'm concerned it's a good thing. About time Steam got a real competitor.
 
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