Stardock: Steam Has 70% Of PC Download Market

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Grand Master

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Just about everybody involved with digital distribution is coy when it comes to sales numbers. Nobody wants to give the game away. But that doesn't stop some - like publishers/online retailers Stardock - from trying to guess! Stardock boss Brad Wardell says "Our estimation is that Steam - as the current market leader - enjoys approximately 70 percent of the overall digital distribution market with Impulse at 10 percent and all others combined at 20 percent in terms of actual dollars generated per month".

While we have our doubts that Stardock's Impulse service is at #2 (surely Direct2Drive is bigger?), Steam's 70% figure is - if it checks out - both interesting and frightening at the same time. That's about the same level of market domination Apple enjoys in the music player scene.

Quick: name another portable music device that's not an iPod. Off the top of your head. Now tell me how many people you know own an iPod compared to a portable music device that's not an iPod.

Exactly.

Source: http://kotaku.com/5409036/stardock-steam-h...download-market

Grand Master

Steven P. Administrators

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Create a game so popular its still being played today, then force customers to download it, plus all updates through their own service rather than buy it in stores, add in bonus levels that can only be downloaded through it and there you have your market dominance :p

Grand Master

Rudy

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Create a game so popular its still being played today, then force customers to download it, plus all updates through their own service rather than buy it in stores, add in bonus levels that can only be downloaded through it and there you have your market dominance :p

Makes sense and I'm sure Stardock is doing the same thing (can you download their games through Steam?)

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iamwhoiam

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IMO, Steam is the best service around. I wouldn't switch to another online distribution channel if I were paid to.

While we have our doubts that Stardock's Impulse service is at #2 (surely Direct2Drive is bigger?), Steam's 70% figure is - if it checks out - both interesting and frightening at the same time.

It won't be long before the E.U. will be involved in that.

Grand Master

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I see these platforms kind of like equivalents of PSN/XBL on the PC.

I have steam installed, it caters for so many of my games, it's a complete pain in the ass to install another program, have another service running on my PC, and another list of games to manage.

These are closed systems on what is an open piece of hardware. You update your games through them, you boot your games through them, you redownload your games through them. Everything has to go through them.

I think this is the one instance where I enjoy a dominant service, so I don't need to bother with installing 10 of them and having them all run at once on my PC just to get exclusive games each of them have. It helps steam is actually really good at what it does, and Valve are a good PC development company.

Biggest competitor I see is DRM free services like Direct2Drive.

Grand Master

ylcard

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If only their servers were any good, sometimes you can get your maximum speed, sometimes it crawls at 1 KB/s.. Updates at first start are terrible and put my friend off Steam...

Overall I like Steam for the simplicity, but sometimes the simplicity hurts the game itself - mods and such are sometimes a bit hard to install / run.

Grand Master

Pc_Madness

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I do not like Steam for their prices but do like them for their simplicity.

They don't set the prices, the developers / publishers do, which is why you often see them being the same price as retail copies. Valve's games are usually half price for me. :s

Grand Master

.KICK

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They don't set the prices, the developers / publishers do, which is why you often see them being the same price as retail copies. Valve's games are usually half price for me. :s

Really? I did not know this, I thought they had to price them high because Steam takes a chunk of the profits? I maybe wrong, don't really know much about it if I can be honest.

Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

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Really? I did not know this, I thought they had to price them high because Steam takes a chunk of the profits? I maybe wrong, don't really know much about it if I can be honest.

Over here L4D2 is $110 in store, but it's $54.37 from Steam. If a game is priced high on steam it's because the developer/publisher wants it to be.

I know that. I'm just saying that it'll be challenged in the E.U. at some point.

I don't see why, I can't think of any recent actions by the E.U. against companies that got their market share by natural means.

Grand Master

Spookie

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Posted
They don't set the prices, the developers / publishers do, which is why you often see them being the same price as retail copies. Valve's games are usually half price for me. :s

Aye it's a joke, Activision want ?40 for MW2! ?14 more than what I paid for L4D2!

Steam is deserving of it's position though, if I ever want to buy a PC game I always look at steam before going in to shops.

Grand Master

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New game prices are terrible but it is the publishers/developers setting prices.

They do the same for retail, but the difference in retail is a lot of shops eat the profit/make a loss to attract buyers into the store. When it comes to online shops, they'll cut their profits lower because they don't have to pay as many staff/costs related to running a store. That creates the ridiculous prices we sometimes see.

On Steam Valve just leave it up to the publishers, Valve aren't buying in thousands of copies of stock, there is no stock, just a virtual copy on a server somewhere being accessed. Some bandwidth costs, but they are low.

Unfortunately for us that means these service providers don't really have a massive drive to try and gain your business for every single release. They tend to make most of their business out of their sales/bundles/deals. What they make from new releases will mostly come from the loyal customers, or those too lazy to wait on a physical copy.

Grand Master

Digitalx

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steam is good unless you get this mess like modern warfare 2 and activision and steam charging full retail shelf price if not more when in theory the point of digital distribution is to lower costs by removing the need to make physical copies and sell off the game. :s

Grand Master

McCordRm

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I freakin love STEAM.

Not having to keep up with hard media, etc. is a god-send. I load it up and it reminds me of the games I own. And if I get nostalgic for an old game I bought, I'm only a download away from playing it again.

PLUS, I can see what my friends are playing. If it's a multi-player game, I can jump right in and say hello. Pretty freakin sweet service, if you ask me.

My ONLY complaint about digital downloads is when the price is the same for store-bought versions. There's no shipping issues or media (disks, manuals, etc) costs associated so I hate paying them anyhow. STEAM, however, has been pretty good about running deals on games.

Grand Master

Subject Delta

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Steam is great, but their prices for third party, non valve games are not. I purchased a copy of F.E.A.R 2 Project Origin from HMV for ?9.99, a full copy that actually registers to your steam account anyway. The game is ?24.99 on steam, which is just crazy

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