Valve Software and Dell's high-end gaming PC arm Alienware inked a deal that will bring leading digital distribution platform Steam to Alienware's line of gaming systems, the companies announced Wednesday.
Currently, Steam is the dominant digital distribution platform on the market, and with the deal, Valve's service seemingly gets first dibs on new Alienware gamers. Steam will come on Alienware desktops including Area-51 and Aurora, as well as M17x and M15x laptops. Valve's acclaimed Portal will also come pre-loaded.
By including the digital download service with its hardware, Alienware buyers have easier access to the Steam community, which has 20 million accounts, according to Valve. Along with connecting PC gamers with community features, Steam offers online customers 950 games for download.
"With its automatic game updates, easy friend finding and the ability to play your Steam purchased games on any PC, Valve has helped simplify PC Gaming to make it more enjoyable," said Frank Azor, senior manager of product planning for Dell's Gaming Group. "It's for these reasons we selected Steam to compliment the Alienware experience."
"Entertainment, specifically gaming, is a primary use of PCs in the home and on the road," said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve. "Alienware is a household name among PC gamers who want the most out of their hardware. The combination of Alienware hardware and Steam equals a superior gaming experience."
I am now one of those gamers who buys the majority of their games via legal digital downloads. I use Steam for most of them, gog,com for older games when I want the extra goodies and ease of use with Vista, and am trying Impulse.com for dirt-cheap older games.
Just today I bought Dragon Age in the enhanced digital edition and Far Cry 2 with the added content via Steam.
This is rapidly becoming the distribution methods of choice and digital downloads are going to be the way we get our content in the future. I am glad to see this being recognized.
@Robert: in what way is Steam bloated? The interface is responsive enough on my increasingly ancient PC (last Windows XP install: February 2007 and barring the GPU, the hardware is at least a year older) and my Steam install directory weighs in at 100mb, of which 40mb is the "winui.gcf" configuration file!
I can also confirm that you can copy Steam game data from one machine to another without any issues - (and/or have the games installed on two machines, so long as you don't try to have two copies of the game running at the same time) - in any event, there's no limits on how many times you can re-download a game! Obviously there's a time factor for people on low-bandwidth connections, but that's a separate matter.
There's more fundamental commercial/political/philosophical issues around portals like Steam, but as far as I can see, it does what it's meant to do - and (at least for the moment) with considerably more flexibility and freedom than some of the alternatives!
Just today I bought Dragon Age in the enhanced digital edition and Far Cry 2 with the added content via Steam.
This is rapidly becoming the distribution methods of choice and digital downloads are going to be the way we get our content in the future. I am glad to see this being recognized.
I can also confirm that you can copy Steam game data from one machine to another without any issues - (and/or have the games installed on two machines, so long as you don't try to have two copies of the game running at the same time) - in any event, there's no limits on how many times you can re-download a game! Obviously there's a time factor for people on low-bandwidth connections, but that's a separate matter.
There's more fundamental commercial/political/philosophical issues around portals like Steam, but as far as I can see, it does what it's meant to do - and (at least for the moment) with considerably more flexibility and freedom than some of the alternatives!