... Like Civ 5, Elemental will be available through brick 'n mortar, Amazon and other locations (I'm assuming) yet to participate in the community and receive patch updates, an Impulse account and installation will be required. How is this different to Civ5? It's NOT...
Actually, it's quite different. Stardock is using it's own service, Impulse Reactor, and is intertwining Elemental and Impulse and Impulse Reactor together at their descretion. Now, let's say you make a game and want to use Impulse Reactor as well to gain access to all the features. You can, for free, and you can then host it on any other Digitial Distribution platform you want, including Steam, without requiring Impulse or an Impulse Account. People who buy the game via Impulse can have it updated via Impulse and people who buy the game over Steam can update the game over Steam without needing Impulse. It doesn't force anyone to do anything. Now, let's say you want to use Steamworks instead. You can, provided Valve get a slice of your profits and your game is locked to Steam. If you buy it over Impulse, they need to download and install Steam and get a Steam Account and then download the game through Steam before they can even run their game.
A company intertwining their own games with their own services makes
sense. I'd have a lot less faith in Impulse, for example, if their own Development company weren't using it's feature set. A company forcing everyone else in the industry to use their service makes sense for that company, though not for anyone else, including the customer.
...I live in Australia where new releases cost me $100, whereas on Steam they are usually $50-60...
I also live in Australia, and the highest profile titles on Steam are currently running around US$69-79.00 mark, which on a good day with exchange rates, equates to around AU$80-95.00. However, the retail stores have, for example, Modern Warfare 2 for AU$49.95 (K-Mart, I believe). Even at the so-called massive sales on Steam, where you'll see 25-50% knocked off a title, the prices are inflated considering the cost of physically producing the box, discs, manual, shipping, placement, etc.
I'm sorry Brad, but you are wrong on this one. On March 6th 2008, Steam sold Two Worlds 75% off. On March 28th 2008 Prey was discounted 75%. In May 2008 Shadowgrounds: Survivor was 75% off. Source: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=720271
According to Wikipedia, Impulse has been released on June 17th 2008. So the numbers just don't add up. If i'm wrong, please tell me how
Let me see if I understand you. Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock and owner of Impulse, provided incorrect information on his own product and company? The third part site, Archive.org, is also wrong? Do you re-read your posts before you click 'Post'?
In an recent interview you said publishers actually dislike Steamworks and, according to you, tell their developers to not use it anymore. Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/acting-on-impulse-interview
Now you are worrying about Steam becoming a closed standard on PC. What has changed in the last two weeks? If your statement in the GI.biz interview was true, there is nothing to worry about, isn't it?
I don't understand the point of this?
Brad advised that his contacts don't like Steamworks. Brad then advised that in a hypothetical situation where Steamworks is allowed to continue unabaided ("it's logical conclusion") which it won't do due to services like Impulse Reactor being made available soon (hence the situation being hypothetical and thus the useage of the term "its logical conclusion"), that Steam would create a console-style environment where the platform as a whole passes through the company which owns the platform which in this hypothetical situation would be Valve due to the locked in nature of the Steamworks DRM, thus creating his point.
What's
your point?