he retail giant has acquired Impulse and Spawn Labs.
By Chris Pereira
GameStop has been intent on expanding into different areas of the
business for some time now, from having purchased flash game site
Kongregate last year to offering downloadable content in stores. The
company's surprising series of moves today sets it up to be a much more
direct competitor to services like Steam and OnLive.
Two separate acquisitions were announced today, with the first being of
Spawn Labs, a company that focuses on streaming technology. It brings
"patented technology" and will work with GameStop's research &
development group to "develop GameStop's growing suite of digital game
products and services."
The other move was to acquire Impulse, Inc. from Stardock. Impulse is a
digital distribution platform (primarily for games) first launched in
2008 that has expanded to include features like matchmaking, friends
lists, chatting, Achievements, and more. It's a direct competitor to
Valve's Steam; with GameStop's influence behind it, it could prove to be
a much bigger player in the digital distribution space. It will
continue to run as usual, with GameStop.com integration expected in "the
next few months."
"Our customers are gaming in many locations and on many devices, and we
need to deliver the same great immersive experience that they have come
to expect," said GameStop President Tony Bartel. "Spawn Labs and Impulse
provide a customer-friendly and publisher-friendly way for us to
accomplish this."
"With these important acquisitions, we will continue to make appropriate
investments related to our multichannel strategy," added CEO J. Paul
Raines. "GameStop is uniquely positioned to be the leader in both the
physical and digital gaming space."
The Impulse acquisition includes not just the client that allows gamers
to purchase and download games, but also Impulse Reactor (which
developers can implement in their games to include DRM and support for
things like Achievements and cloud storage on Impulse) and Impulse
Publisher (a tool for developers to monitor and manage sales of their
games).
GameStop does currently sell digital games on its website, although
compared with other digital game distributors, it's an option that can
be described as lackluster. Now, with an established platform to take
advantage of, there's the opportunity for Steam to receive some serious
competition. And while OnLive and Gaikai have already shown that they
can stream games to gamers over the 'net (depending on your Internet
connection, of course), Spawn Labs is an unknown.
Assuming it pans out and is capable of delivering a service on par with
the competition, GameStop could potentially offer customers something
very unique: Games sold on disc in its stores that can also be
downloaded from Impulse or played instantly through a streaming service,
all for one price (perhaps with a premium of, say, $10 over the $50 or
$60 you'd normally pay).
A conference call is scheduled for Monday, at which point we should learn much more about GameStop's plans for both companies.
