Impulse Nears It's Millionth User

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Stardock's digital distribution platform, Impulse, has grown to close to a million users since its launch last summer. Impulse enables users to purchase and download PC software including games, utilities, and applications. The nine-month-old Impulse platform now boasts games from THQ, 2KGames, Atari, Capcom, Dreamcatcher, Epic, Paradox as well as numerous new applications, utilities, anti-virus and more. To celebrate its success, Stardock will be giving its one millionth Impulse customer a brand new top-of-the-line gaming PC worth more than $4,000.

Next month Stardock plans to release the third major update to Impulse since its release which will include features such as Impulse Anywhere (ability to download your title from a web page on one PC and then install on your home PC), and the full release of Impulse Reactor, which will provide in-game features from Impulse seamlessly and an updated Impulse client with a host of tweaks and changes.

For more information, visit www.impulsedriven.com.

#1 andrewbares on 19 Mar 2009 - 02:47

Cool, I might have to check it out.

#2 msing on 19 Mar 2009 - 03:27

A million users in six months? Wow this is totally under the radar.

(2 replies) #3 Dischordiant on 19 Mar 2009 - 03:35

Interesting...it's like Steam...without the good games. Except for a handful. I'll pass.

#3.1 GreyWolfSC on 19 Mar 2009 - 03:47

Looks like there's quite a few of the same games.

#3.2 Dischordiant on 19 Mar 2009 - 14:01

GreyWolfSC said,

Yeah, basically the handful were ones that I'd actually heard of. The majority of those are unknown to me.

(1 reply) #4 +dead.cell on 19 Mar 2009 - 04:11

Unreal Tournament 3 for $29.99. Steam has it on sale right now for $11.99, "Now includes the free "Titan Pack" expansion!" Not too big on UT, but was tempted by the deal itself. Regular price goes for $19.99, even at Best Buy I believe. Sorry, but $29.99 is a bit ridiculous if Stardock is attempting to compete in any way.

Sadly, that's pretty much all that caught my eye in the game department. :/

#4.1 rm20010 on 19 Mar 2009 - 04:29

Thing is, the newest UT3 patch has Steamworks integration, further questioning the whole point of getting it off Impulse at a higher price as you'll have to eventually register your game with Steam to take advantage of everything offered in the latest patch.

It's just that game though. There's plenty others on Impulse that aren't available on Steam, although they're mostly indie games.

(3 replies) #5 sorlag on 19 Mar 2009 - 14:00

Most of the users came from WindowBlinds and the other Products/Projects they own.
Also if you sell an old game for a dollar on a weekend... it's clear that many will download impulse just for that game

#5.1 sorlag on 19 Mar 2009 - 17:13

Just as info... im a Stardock customer and i run Impulse every day... so don't think im trolling here.

#5.2 +dead.cell on 19 Mar 2009 - 17:26

See, this is what I thought. If people are using it for software as perhaps they may have some Stardock products, I don't really see Impulse being in direct competition with Steam.

Perhaps if there were statistics on how many of the users were doing something related to gaming, we could get a better idea.

I was also thinking that, if Stardock could get deals on great software like Steam does with games, perhaps it may help in reducing the amount of piracy. As I stated above, I thought about buying UT3 from Steam just because it was so damn cheap. Having good sales or deals will generally keep people coming back. Perhaps the developers would enjoy it as well if they actually made more of a profit from it too, aside from just getting their products name out there. (which is something Stardock has to do for Impulse as well)

Honestly though, I dislike the whole lightning bolt thing. I'd like to actually see reviews or links to sites with reviews.

#5.3 Frogboy on 20 Mar 2009 - 15:14

The Steam weekend sales were a response to the Impulse weekend sales. UT3 was on sale for $3.99 during one of those weekends. So was World of Goo.

Impulse's selection on games will continue to grow. Even iTunes took awhile to catch up to BuyMusic.com in terms of selection.

#6 abysal on 19 Mar 2009 - 17:32

If I would of known that I would have had to use impulse to update Sins and now Icon Packager and Windows Blinds, then I would of never have bought those products. I guess it's good that people have choice for digital distribution. But I like have my patches and updates downloaded and saved to my NAS. Just makes me feel better that in case the whole impulse or steam thing goes under, I'll still have my latest patches. Look at EA link; See how well that played out. Luckily I was able to copy my downloaded $10 content packs and save them, I don't know if I'd be able to download them now since they were distributed over EA Link.

(1 reply) #7 jstillion on 19 Mar 2009 - 21:08

Where Steam focuses on games, Impulse is non-game and game software (a lot of indie software makers).

#7.1 +dead.cell on 20 Mar 2009 - 03:52

Except there's simply not enough software to really draw a lot of people. I mean, from what I saw, they only have Corel under the Office stuff alone. They only have Stardock's free software as well when there are plenty of great free tools available. Then again, I guess that would be like trying to compete with Download.com which I'd call next to impossible.

Err... oh wow... I just checked out Download.com and looked at one of the Corel products that's listed on Impulse as well... Impulse has it going for $299.99 and Corel's own website has it at $279.99...

Bleh, I think I'm put off at looking for sales on Impulse now.

#8 thealexweb on 20 Mar 2009 - 21:27

yawn, just use steam.

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