It’s no secret that GameStop has been looking to get its fingers into the digital distribution cookie jar. The downloadable sector is growing fast enough to threaten the brick-and-mortar retailer’s bottom line. Why go to a store with pushy employees when you can just download what you want from the comfort of your own couch, right? So, it’s really not a huge surprise that GameStop has acquired Spawn Labs and is in the process of purchasing Stardock’s digital distro platform Impulse, two pickups that will surely pave the way for GameStop to start moving into the digital space.
Spawn Labs--the lesser known entity in this deal--is basically a peer-to-peer gaming service similar to OnLive. It specializes in streaming games to users via everyone's favorite omnipresent cloud. Impulse, on the other hand, is one of the few big names in digital distribution that's not "Steam." It may not be as popular as Valve's service, but Impulse has been turning a profit, which has become a point of concern for Stardock’s founder Brad Wardell. "When Impulse became our number one source of revenue," Wardell told Joystiq in an interview, "I realized it was time for us to look at our options there." Earlier he said that it wasn’t his goal to grow Impulse into a dedicated retailer, so he was open to selling the business.
GameStop points out that Impulse will provide “three specific components” for studios and publishers. The first is the client itself that will provide games to users. The second component is the “reactor,” which from what I can tell, will operate as a hub for all the secondary functions of the client by providing DRM, achievements, friends lists, cloud-based saves, and account management functions. The third and final component is the “publisher,” which will give publishers the power to “manage all aspects of their game with powerful real-time reporting and management tools.”
In the press release announcing all of this, GameStop neglected to get into the hard details about when or how it will begin to make its digital push with these businesses, but it is noted that Impulse will become integrated with GameStop.com “within the next few months.” The wording in the PR about the Spawn Labs acquisition certainly makes it clear that GameStop will begin pushing streaming on multiple devices as soon as possible: “once the Spawn Labs integration and testing on a new consumer interface is complete,” the boilerplate reads, “users will have immediate access to a wide selection of high-definition video games on demand on any Internet-enabled device.” Guys, I think the future is here!