Stardock's Impulse Nears Millionth User
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: Personal Computing
Stardock Corporation announced that its digital download platform, Impulse has grown to close to a
million users since its launch last summer. Impulse (www.impulsedriven.com) enables users to purchase and download PC software including games, utilities and applications. The nine-month-old Impulse platform now boasts games from THQ, 2KGames, Atari, Capcom, Dreamcatcher, Epic, Paradox as well as numerous new applications, utilities, anti-virus and more. To celebrate its success, Stardock will be giving its one millionth Impulse customer a brand new top-of-the-line gaming PC worth more than $4,000.
Impulse attributes much of its early success to customer-friendly experience as well as aggressive pricing such as its "Weekend Impulse Buys" in which selected titles are up to 70 percent off for that weekend. Another reason Stardock cites for Impulse's success has been its support of local currency conversion which has been popular with both users and publishers that use it.
"We're very pleased with how quickly Impulse is growing," said Brad Wardell, president & CEO of Stardock. "The digital distribution market is still in its infancy, ensuring that publishers and consumers both have choices this early on ensures that this market will continue to be dynamic and competitive."
Stardock will be at the Game Developer's Conference meeting with publishers as it prepares to formally unveil Impulse Reactor, a library that allows publishers to provide effective protection for their software, in-game chat, ‘friends’ lists and micro-expansion purchasing. Impulse Reactor does not require publishers to change any code in their software or include a third-party client with their title. This allows publishers to have a single executable to be sold at retail or digitally that is vendor neutral.
Wardell continued, “A big part of our upcoming focus with Impulse is to work with publishers to ensure that they don't lock themselves and their customers into a particular vendor. That means providing technical alternatives to publishers they can count on and the best possible user experience for our users."
Next month Stardock plans to release the third major update to Impulse since its release which will include features such as Impulse Anywhere (ability to download your title from a web page on one PC and then install on your home PC), and the full release of Impulse Reactor, which will provide in-game features from Impulse seamlessly and an updated Impulse client with a host of tweaks and changes.
Gas Powered Games' new real-time strategy game / RPG Demigod will showcase the new Impulse Reactor features on April 14th.
"By Impulse's first birthday, we expect Impulse to be the 2nd largest digital distributor of PC games and to have nearly all of the major PC game publishers on board," said Wardell.
To learn more about Impulse, visit www.impulsedriven.com.
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Reply #2 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 2:41 PM
inb4 people making a boatload of new accounts to try to win.
Joking aside, congrats you guys. 
Reply #5 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 2:48 PM
Oh shoot.... was hoping for a winner amongst the current users 
One million users... That's quite an accomplishment! 
Reply #6 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 2:52 PM
Does the millionth user get a cookie or something?
Reply #8 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 2:59 PM
And eets-like pinatas! Or, you could just poach an eet and use him. Just wash your hands after, you never know where it's been. And probably don't want to.
Reply #9 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 3:33 PM
So actually, it seems there's some confusion (at least for me) between the 1 millionth "customer" and 1 millionth "user". Where I can be a customer everytime I buy something, I can only become a user once. Which is it?
Reply #10 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 3:35 PM
Read properly, and you shall be enlightened.......
To celebrate its success, Stardock will be giving its one millionth Impulse customer a brand new top-of-the-line gaming PC worth more than $4,000.
Reply #12 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 3:55 PM
How come I don't get a top of the line PC for being like the first to preorder Demigod?! D:
Congrats, though. 
Reply #13 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 4:45 PM
That means 999,999 people will know what I already know. Impulse is the future and here to stay.
At the rate this platform is gaining momentum, two million won't be far behind. Congratulations.
Reply #14 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 5:08 PM
The beginning is near, i shall resign my current membership, lockup a dedicated server on an endless loop of join-leave-join processing to raise my chances at becoming the millionth lucky geek winner of a mindnumbing prize (4000$/PC, you must be jokin'!) --- but i won't!
Congrats.
(Btw, what's my Number? 25,000 or less?)
Reply #15 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 6:38 PM
... I'm happy for stardock.
Promotions like giving away a computer to the 1 millionth user is just utterly stupid though... There will be tons of idiots creating false accounts (less if there is purchase required to be eligible), and even if that doesn't happen, why is the one millionth customer more special than every other person who has signed up before him/her? This has always bugged me when these things happen... I can see how a real life store could promote itself this way, but they can't be expected to have a list of all previous customers like any webbased store can.
999'999 people who also helped build this massive userbase are all ineligible... No, that's just plain wrong... a $100 gift certificate for the millionth user and a random draw among the full million of users for the computer would be the right way to go (in theory, the draw COULD end up with #1000000 as a winner too, but atleast it would be fair to the rest of the users)...
Oh well, I congratulate, and am happy, for the lucky ba****d who wins the thing...
Reply #16 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 6:58 PM
What defines an Impulse customer? I can see everybody running to yahoo and hotmail, creating addresses, reging with Impulse and downloading it.
Reply #17 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 7:01 PM
We're defining it as users who have purchased something.
We have millions of Impulse accounts but a lot of them are using freeware programs or shareware.
Reply #18 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 8:25 PM
Omg, then this IS a wholelotta customers to keep track of.
I worked in a Home-Renovation center years ago as a salesman and even the tiny pack of Nails in 1 pound box buyers were as precious as any others -- i'm sure you know about the 1 brings ten more rule but a single unsatisfied 'person' has clear influence over 50 prospects.
When the Millionth get that free PC, you'll get a roaring Eagle flying forever in Impulse's favor, that's a given!
Great decision, business wise.
Reply #19 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 10:37 PM
How about a reward for the 999,999 of us that have already purchased something through Impulse?
I need a tuner/capture card.
Reply #20 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 11:26 PM
I need GC3 - faster.
And possibly a rebate on Elemental beta, can that be arranged? 
Hey, Who was the fifth and last winner in the StarDog contest, btw?
And, when does the Cat sweepstakes start?
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Reply #1 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 2:30 PM
Congratulations. That's quite a milestone.
Brad: You've really done well for yourself. We may not see eye to eye, but I do have huge amounts of respect for you and your accomplishments. Kudos.