I’m going to be on holiday from tomorrow, so add a week on to the usual amount of time an article takes me.

Steam Review time? Theory time? I’m wondering what to call it

The obvious difference between Steam and Impulse is, that Impulse doesn’t have to be running to play the games. All downloaded software will get installed normally, without any dependency for Impulse. This might appeal to some publishers that don’t want to tie their product to Steam.

Impulse also doesn’t force auto-updates, it shows available updates in a seperate tab and let’s the user decide when to install it. Tbh, I like the Steam behaviour more in this regard.

The current line-up of publishers and games is quite strong for a new platform. They also offer some useful software like Corel’s Wordperfect or AVG’s Anti-Virus.

Another interesting feature is the nvidia driver update. Though it’s just a link to a webpage where you can manually download and install the driver, this link is prominently positioned, so it will get some attention. They probably will extend and integrate this feature more in the future.

I’m very curios how this will develope. This is what the press release sais about the future:
“Phase 2: In late August, the second phase of Impulse will be released along with the SDK for the Impulse Reactor. Additional major publishers and developers will be announced and released, along with Achievement and Game Rankings functionality. A large number of unannounced features will be announced as well.

Phase 3: Early in February 2009, Phase 3 will launch with Demigod. Yet more titles will be available and MyImpulse will be officially launched (beta will be publicly available for months before hand). More info to come on this as we get closer.”