A year ago if someone would have told me that Impulse would have become nearly as popular as it has I wouldn’t have believed it.  The growth of digital distribution has been explosive across the board.

Impulse Phase IV, launched today, is a major overhaul for the popular digital distribution platform in more ways than one.

First, there is the client itself.  While some users have requested more visual options (like darker backgrounds and such which are in the works), the big change with the Impulse client is performance.

A year ago, developer Stardock had to have a “fast load” option in order for the pokey client to load at a reasonable level. It did this by having part of itself launch on start-up which was objected to (rightly so) by many users.  Fast-forward a year and Impulse loads quickly and uses very little memory.  Even when web controls are used, the amount of memory used is still far less than many commonly used programs as the screenshot above makes apparent.

In addition, a year ago Impulse’s content included basically Stardock’s plus a handful of indies.  Now, a year later pretty much every major player in the PC game market is on Impulse.  This week EA’s flagship titles go up and most new games arrive on Impulse at the same time as anywhere else with its prices being typically lower and its download speeds being higher than elsewhere.

A year after launch, Impulse now boasts most of the top games at launch day and supports applications and utilities as well.

The original Impulse store was…painful.  The new one allows per category featuring.

The new store catalog is quick to browse

Now, that isn’t to say that Impulse represents perfection.  There are still several things that need to be added in my view to Impulse:

1. For Gamers. Ready to Play needs to get out there as soon as possible.  Users who go to http://readytoplay.stardock.com and sign on for the beta which will start getting out there in the next few days.  However, Stardock does not intend to bundle Ready to Play with the Impulse client at this time in order to keep the base download size of the package as small as possible.

2. Community Features. These remain an area Stardock will need to focus more on if it hopes to see it be more competitive with entrenched players like Steam.  That is, groups, clans, developer support features, third-party support for Achievements, rankings, and match making are all things Impulse needs to improve on.  Still, Phase IV of Impulse sets up a good foundation to get there.

 
Impulse’s Common Virtual Platform (CVP) supports achievements, rankings, and match-making but it isn’t expected to be made available to third-party developers until this Winter. Since it’s .NET based, developers can support it with virtually no code changes to their games. But it’s not out yet for third parties so it’s academic.

3. Catalog. Catalog. Catalog. While Impulse has done a good job in catching up to other players in this space in terms of getting new third-party content, there’s a huge back catalog that Stardock needs to get onto Impulse to make it compelling.

Right now, Impulse’s biggest advantages remain very “bread and butter” (i.e. boring): Stuff on it tends to be cheaper, its download speeds higher, and  you don’t have to have it running to play your game. 

The last part above is going to be a defining feature.  While Impulse tries to componentized itself (with a separate tray application and Ready to Play) other players are increasingly putting more and more into a single ubiquitous client. Both strategies have their advantages and disadvantages and it will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Of course, the real winner in all this have been the gamers. Anyone who has purchased a game in one of the “weekend sales” online can attest to the importance of competition.