Someday, someone is going to do a round up of digital distribution platforms and get around to comparing one very important feature: How FAST they download.

That’s one of Impulse’s biggest advantages. It’s got crazy fast download speeds whether you’re in North America or Australia or Germany or wherever.

Here’s a little video I took from my relatively humble home Comcast cable setup.

As some of you know, I live on Blue’s News and Shacknews along with a few other sites so when I saw the Impulse top 10 sales list on there I thought that pretty cool. So here are some random thoughts on digital distribution, numbers, and retail.

These are just my personal opinions take them for whatever you think it’s worth.

1. Retail still dominates compared to digital distribution on PC games.

2. Individual retailers don’t sell that many units a week. I.e. I would say that Steam outsells an individual major retail chain on a new release and that Impulse probably outsells the typical individual smaller retail chain.

3. Retail will continue to dominate as long as digital distributors don’t come up with a standardized digital format for games (i.e. standardized installer). I don’t have to make different boxes for every retailer but if I want to put my game on various digital distributors, I end up having to do work on each one.

4. Many hard core gamers I’ve noticed think that it’s all or nothing for digital distributors. It’s not. Gamers should want as many choices as they can competing for their hard earned money.

5. My guess is that digital distributors represent around 25% of the PC games market for games also sold at retail.

6. My guess is that Steam currently has around 80% of the digital distribution market. Impulse probably has around 10% and all the others have the remaining 10%.

7. The entire combined active online community of Steam, Impulse, etc. is less than the Halo 3 community on the Xbox 360. 

8. The market penetration of digital distribution is probably at around 10% on the PC IMO.

9. The top 10 sales numbers on Steam and Impulse are easily as statistically valid as the top 10 PC games sales on Amazon.com (in terms of actual units sold). Or to be even more clear cut with my opinion, I believe, based on having seen numbers, that a random game on Impulse or Steam will outsell same game on Amazon.com.  This isn’t a critique of Amazon.com (where I do an insane amount of shopping) but more of the numbers that Impulse and Steam (particularly Steam) are capable of doing and their specialization.

10. Most games in digital distribution sell terribly. However, those same games would simply be unavailable at retail.  The onus is on the providers of digital distribution services to make it easier to get games on their services. It is not the responsibility of publishers to do this. Digital distribution offers the opportunity for game developers/publishers to turn their games into long-term assets.

As discussed yesterday, I’ve retaken the reigns on Object Desktop after a 3 year absence.  And the team has some very cool stuff that is now coming together in rapid fashion.

Today I’m going to talk about something that I think is a pretty big deal: DeskScapes 3.

For those of you not familiar with DeskScapes, it is a program that applies animated wallpaper. It’s effectively the only animated wallpaper program available for users of XP, Vista, and Windows 7. 

One of the first changes I wanted to see made to DeskScapes as part of the “new regime” is for it to be a lot more practical.  I like animated wallpaper as much as the next person, which means I’ll load it up for a bit, check it out, and slowly get tired of it like any wallpaper.  But what we really wanted to see with DeskScapes 3 is for it to be even more useful to a wider population.

DeskScapes 3 (v2.91 beta) will be going out tomorrow for Object Desktop users.  What’s in it that’s new?

Well the most obvious new thing is the support for your existing static wallpapers. But more importantly, that you can now apply the same kinds of effects to your existing wallpapers that you could once only apply to Dreams. 

In the above example, I’ve taken a very colorful image and applied a Sepia filter to it in order to make (for me) a better background.

The new DeskScapes beta also introduces a pretty big new technology that has been discussed previously but now we’ve actually finally got it together: Hybrid Dreams

The idea is to make it so that people can take an existing image (a static one) and animate a part of it. So in this case, only the trees and the lights and some sky elements change and it’s very subtle. But because it’s such a small part, it uses virtually no CPU.  The idea is to be able to make it so that animated wallpapers need not be obnoxious but merely a natural evolution beyond the static pictures we’ve had for the past two decades.

If you don’t have Object Desktop you can get it at http://www.objectdesktop.com.  The final version of DeskScapes is due out on October 28th.

If you’re feeling lucky you can try out the beta of an updated overlay.

https://draginol.stardock.net/files/impulsereactor-100609.zip

Unzip the files into your bin directory.  This is a beta, so back up the files you’re overwriting. If you’re non-technical and don’t know how to do this then wait until the official update.

Very useful (like in my game, NeptunePisces, rage quitted in our game after insulting our team because he died, now I can make a note of that <g>).

To write notes about players, go to their profile and go to the notes tab. Here’s the one for me:

http://pantheon.demigodthegame.com/player/10397/notes

For many years, Object Desktop was synonymous with the phrase “What the next version of Windows might have in it.”

The first Windows version, released way back in 1999, introduced GUI skinning, ZIP files being treated as folders, the Control Center.

In fact, here’s a screenshot of Object Desktop from 1999.

Object Desktop in 1999

Those features we take for granted now in Windows.  GUI skinning? Windows XP provided that.  ZIP files as folders, old hat now.  A “Sidebar”? Windows Vista users know something about that.  Features like gadgets and widgets and icon changing and other such things were also part of what made Object Desktop so forward thinking.

Object Desktop in 2009

Object Desktop became extremely popular and its users and Stardock became invested in the feature set that made it so popular.  The problem is that Windows itself has moved on and Object Desktop has to move on too.  That means it’s time for some tough love.

On October 5, 2009, after a nearly 3 year absence, I have returned to being in charge of Object Desktop again.  Being away from the desktop enhancements area has allowed me to take a fresh look at the state of the art in Windows tech, the “Skinning community”, and so forth.  And I must say, there’s a lot of work needed here.

Decisions

After looking at things, I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to make some pretty big changes.

#1 Our focus will be power users. NOT casual users.  For the past 3 years, things like MyColors have focused on casual users. The idea is very sound and I was an early supporter of the concept of MyColors – grow beyond power users into the much larger base of casual users.

The problem is that casual users barely do more than change their wallpaper and they’re not likely to pay $50 (let alone $70 for “ultimate”) to spice up their desktop. 

#2 Make Windows better. Object Desktop was never supposed to become a cosmetic product. The idea was that Object Desktop fixes the things in Windows. Windows was not competitive compared to say the Mac or even Linux visually and Object Desktop helped solve that.  But Windows Vista and Windows 7 look pretty good. Our objective should be to focus on making Windows better overall and there’s plenty of work there.

#3 Eliminate “Ultimate”.  Breaking Object Desktop into Standard and Ultimate editions was a mistake. It should be Object Desktop. Period. So people who have Object Desktop Ultimate will get their access to it extended and we will return to a single version with the launch of Object Desktop 2010.

#4 Content is NOT king. A lot of time, energy, and money was spend making suites and themes these past 3 years.  While many users like the themes, many of them don’t like it coming via MyColors.  MyColors is going to be moved to our enterprise group for license and distribution through our OEM partners.  Mixing and matching the two is not a good idea in my view.  Instead, content will be provided as .suite files that users can then manipulate however they want in Theme Manager.

#5 Sunset programs. There are many programs that we’re going to have to sunset.  What I mean is that new users of Object Desktop won’t get them. People who have Object Desktop already will continue to be able to download them but they won’t be getting updates.  RightClick, Virtual Desktops and ObjectBar will make their way into the sunset.  Others will start to follow soon.

Basically, if a program doesn’t work on Windows 7, 64-bit within the next month, it’ll be sunsetted.  That doesn’t mean that that type of program will go away.  We’ve already started putting together a design document for a replacement for RightClick that we think is a lot better.  We have new ideas for virtual desktops that can make use of WPF and other newer techs.

Now, I know many people reading this will be horrified at some of this.  The focus going forward is going to be Windows 7.  That doesn’t mean users of Windows XP are going to be dropped. They’re not.  But we are going to need to start concentrating our resources on a single platform and that platform is going to be Windows 7.

As a reminder of what kinds of cool stuff we were able to do when we could focus on a single OS:

 
Object Desktop in 2002 with “Toon-XP” suite applied

My objective for the next 6 months is to make sure Object Desktop becomes synonymous with cutting edge technology again.  And do that, we will need to make some tough choices and focus our efforts onto doing cool stuff that hasn’t been done before that make using Windows better.

We’ve been combing through the forums looking at ideas people have had for the game.  Now if anyone wonders why we’ve extended the beta testing period for this game need wonder no longer: We want time to put in your ideas.

So let’s walk through some of them here.

Creating your sovereign

The idea has come up on the forums and we agree that sovereign creation should get its own screen and that the sovereign is independent of the kingdom/empire you choose. That is, you shouldn’t be “stuck” with a particular “wizard” based on your faction choice.

Main UI and info cards

I had originally planned to link to the individual posts where these were discussed but I realized that would take longer than just taking screenshots and showing what was discussed.

Sovereign Handling

People do not want luck to decide the fate of their sovereign in a battle. Many people don’t like the idea of ones sovereign dying meaning the end of the game.

The sovereign being a unit in the game is key to the game mechanics that will become more apparent later. But we have been convinced by the feedback that there shouldn’t be an “evade” ability.

Instead, we’re now leaning towards if your sovereign is attacked and your side loses, the sovereign flees to the nearest city. However, if you attack with your sovereign and you lose, your sovereign dies and the game ends. So you can control whether your sovereign is in any peril.

Game Performance

Beta 1A has pretty bad performance.  This has been fixed internally due largely to a couple of one line type bugs that affected a lot of stuff.

General Bug reports

Kryo has been documenting these.  I’m torn between wanting to put up an interim build this week that lets people have the bug fixes sooner and waiting until next week when there’s a lot more features. By waiting until next week, we don’t have to fixate on a build and more will get done so we’re leaning towards that.

Thoughts on Mopping up

Since there is magic in Elemental it frees us from a lot of the usual “mop up” issues found in traditional strategy games.  At least, that’s the theory.  Over the next several months you guys will have a lot to say on this.

How similar to Master of Magic?

Well, that’s a discussion unto itself.  Elemental isn’t designed as a clone. But it is definitely pretty similar in the key elements that, IMO, made MOM special. 

One of the things I’ve noticed is that people say they want transparency in things but in action, they really don’t seem to want it.

For example, politically, I’m a conservative (more of a libertarian).  I am not particularly “into” politics but I do follow it pretty closely and will debate any issue even if I have to switch sides in order to debate it.

But other people take it seriously. Very seriously.  When someone links to one of my blogs, it shows up on my article (cool feature) and so I see people calling me things like “the worst kind of political nutball” or “a total douche” or whatever because my political views don’t match theirs.

That’s just the thing though. The more transparency you have, the more likely you are going to find yourself disagreeing with someone on something.  I’m pro-choice, agnostic, skeptical on human caused global climate change but an environmentalist (my new house will use virtually no fossil fuels), socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and on and on. Just what I’ve mentioned is enough to offend a whole host of people.

If you take your politics that seriously, you’re going to spend a lot of your time being offended.   I have the luxury of being able to say what I want because I’m the principle shareholder of my company. I’ve read how that annoys people but on the other hand, it means I can put into action business theories that seemed (at one time) crazy.

My viewpoints are all over the place because of my background probably. When I say I grew up poor (for an American) I mean literally poor to the point where food was a genuine concern at times.  I only have Stardock now because I started it to pay for school until I could get a “real job”.  But it does mean I have lots of opinions that people may find controversial.

The CEO of a larger company or one where the CEO doesn’t have total control of the company (which is the norm of a company our size or larger) is going to be a lot more politically correct and restrained.  But in becoming restrained, consumers and users lose out I think because there is so much “stuff” out there that the average person knows nothing about that they can find out about because of the anomaly of one of the larger “indies” happening to be controlled by a single individual.

Obviously, it means my politics will offend people at times. I make a point not to donate to any political causes.  But my views are all over the map.  I listen to NPR in the morning on the way to work, Tivo Fox News “Special Report” and MSNBC’s Hardball.

If you are easily offended or base your opinions of other people on their positions on specific political issues then obviously my blog is not going to be a fun place for you to visit.  But on the other hand, if you like to read a lot of stuff on a variety of topics from someone who has had the opportunity to see and do things that many others may not have, this can be a very interesting place.

The more I work with the beta of Elemental the more I think we need to integrate info cards into it.  Those of you who have played Sins of a Solar Empire know what info cards are. They are one of the major game UI innovations that Ironclad has introduced to the genre.

The idea is that when you mouse over something, a “card” appears on the screen that gives detailed information about it. They’re kind of like super tooltips.

Well, for Elemental, that’s what we’re looking to do too. In this case, I’m thinking we should have them look like cards:

So the idea is that you could have your units on screen, mouse over them and see the card. Same for improvements in cities, artifacts, etc. It means a lot less click click click. 

It also gives another opportunity for players to customize something that has a practical use because they could, when designing units, have some control over the info card and thus be able to make distinctive cards for units they want to be able to recognize at a glance.

I’m getting overexposed. I’m as narcissistic as the next guy who refers to themselves in the third person in the name of an article and even I am not that interested in my opinions.

At PAXX I gave an interview to Shacknews primarily on Elemental but we talked about all kinds of other things including my thoughts on Games for Windows Live.

It’s no secret that I’ve been an advocate for Games for Windows Live.  But over time, a handful of the emerging policies have come up that came to a head when I was asked directly about it.

The particular GFWL show-stopper I have had is having to have your app go through any sort of approval process before being updated.  On the console, that makes perfect sense, particularly with regards to a universal achievement system.  But on the PC, where we have to make updates for reasons beyond our control, that’s a problem.

For example, on Windows Vista last week, Microsoft released an update that broke WindowBlinds on Vista. We were able to fix it and get an update out in less than 24 hours. But imagine if we had had to go through some approval process at Microsoft?

Then there is the issue of being charged for these updates. To date, Microsoft hasn’t charged anyone to do an update but it’s been made pretty clear to me that that there would be a limited number of “free updates”.  I don’t want to go through an approval process with a third party to put up an update to my software.

But I do love the concept of Games for Windows Live.  I like the idea of the platform owner (Microsoft) having a series of services available to be used. I’d even pay for it. I don’t want to have to worry about match making and network connectivity.  Anyone who was part of the Demigod launch knows the pain it can be to work out that sort of thing.  But using such services shouldn’t mean that they gain some control over my updates. 

All of Stardock’s recent titles and new games use Games for Windows (not GFWL). I very much like the program of there being some standardization for game developers to adhere to and don’t mind going through an initial certification. It is the post-release update certification I object to as well as the potential of having to pay for it unless the value add was far greater than what it is today.

I wasn’t intending to “slam” GFWL. I simply could not abide by the current model of GFWL and hope/think they will change it as it evolves.  Hopefully all my friends at MS won’t beat me next time I’m over visiting.

Related Articles:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95194-Stardock-CEO-Dishes-on-Sales-Numbers-GFW-Live-and-More

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/10/05/stardock-slams-games-for-windows-live/1

http://www.co-optimus.com/article/2713/Stardock_CEO_Reveals_the_Truth_of_Digital_Distribution_and_the_Industry.html

http://www.destructoid.com/brad-wardell-on-gfwl-you-can-t-do-that-on-the-pc--150639.phtml

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/11923-microsoft-charging-devs-for-games-for-windows-live-patches/

Sycraft has created an Elemental Beta Wiki that you can check out here to get information on how to play, changes, etc.

http://elementalbeta.wikidot.com/start

Kudos to Sycraft taking the initiative on this.