Amazon Takes Aim at Steam With "Core" Game Downloads

[Jaqen Hghar]

While competition is always a good thing, I see no reason to switch or even use another digital distributor than Steam. That is what I personally think.
So even if this was available for people outside of the US, I doubt I would ever use it.
This guy got it covered pretty well, so I'm gonna quote him. Well said sir, well said.

Steam has the digital distribution thing well in the bag because they do damn near everything right with regards to the customer.

The only place they lose marks is with customer support, and even that is slowly improving... although it would be nice to have a human being to call up and speak to.

No other service offers in one complete package:

Unlimited downloads of your purchased Title
2 special sales a week and massive deals on holidays
A clean, convenient and easy to use marketplace and library management utility
Automatic Updates
Cloud Saves
IM Features
IRC Style Community Chat
Guilds & User Blogs
Easy joining of friends games.
The ability to preload money on your account
The ability to gift games to friends
4 Pack deals
Unobtrusive DRM
Built in Anti-Cheat software
UI Modding support
Game Modding Support
Active User Forums for every game and publisher
Demo's
Free Games
Tabs to easily sort new releases, top sellers, coming soon and special offers
A working search function
Convenient market place browsing
Access to game manuals without having to purchase the game
News related specifically to the games you own
The ability to gift spare copies to friends
The ability to add many retail CD keys
The ability to add non-utility games and programs to the users Library
The ability to review and suggest games for friends
A recommendations feature that suggests games you may enjoy
PC and MAC titles where you buy one version and receive both
Automatic Graphic Driver Updates (For AMD/ATI only)
A listing of all your transactions showing when you purchased a title and how much you personally paid for it.
Offline mode so that once you have activated a game once online you may use it without an internet connection.
Achievements
Tracked User stats such as hours played
Hardware surveys that let you trace adoption trends within PC gamers
Backup features to allow you to burn your games to disc

Steam offers a ton of services to the end users, all of which help in offsetting the lack of physical box, manual and game disc at the time of purchase.

This is why I own 214 games on Steam and only 6 on Impulse and none on Amazon/Best Buy/Gamestop digital download services.

 

[Fumbleumble]

Last night I dl'd my first game ever, I don't usually go for digital only.... I got Planescape: Torment (because my original 4 disc set doesn't work anymore) and I got it from GOG.com.

I have to admit GOG absolutely rock.. what a service, and it's got a great community.

 

[Baneat]

I predict a massive flop

this iphone killer has to pull something out completely unprecedented to stand a chance.

 

[Weaver]

An issue is that Steam is worldwide (more or less) while this amazon distribution seems limited to the united states. The Canadian Amazon page does not have these game downloads.

 

[The Random One]

This isn't going to last long. Amazon is incapable of doing a good job competing with Steam in my opinion. They don't have the drive or initiative to truly bother. The fact that they are restricting this to the United States proves this more than anything.

Since I don't care about Steam, am in Brazil, and have a crap computer that can't run Braid, I probably shouldn't care at all at this and have no need to comment, but I need to point out that the limitation to the US is probably not so much a case of 'not bothering' as a legal issue, since Amazon doesn't sell physical media to foreign buyers either.

 

[Togusa09]

Makes me want a single client that can handle the licenses and downloads from mutliple services. Competition for Valve is good, but too many services trying to do their own thing won't attract anyone away from steam.

Even if Amazon start having cool deals etc, they still need to provide incentive to start using. Sure they've got cool deals, but I know I can just wait for a deal of similar or better quality to come up on steam. And who wants to fragment their games library? Even if a game is a few dollars more elsewhere, I'd rather pay the extra for the convenience.

People came to steam because they had to, then they started seeing awesome stuff and stayed. It'd like to say that's a strategy that only works once, but I still haven't seen anything that competes with what steam was like even back when I started using it in 04-05.

 

[Direwolf750]

I checked it out. Not really worth my time with the lack of infrastructure and support and style. It isn't really competition, just an outlet for those who don't want to use Steam. Even then, not exactly a great selection going on there.

 

[Direwolf750]

This isn't going to last long. Amazon is incapable of doing a good job competing with Steam in my opinion. They don't have the drive or initiative to truly bother. The fact that they are restricting this to the United States proves this more than anything.

Since I don't care about Steam, am in Brazil, and have a crap computer that can't run Braid, I probably shouldn't care at all at this and have no need to comment, but I need to point out that the limitation to the US is probably not so much a case of 'not bothering' as a legal issue, since Amazon doesn't sell physical media to foreign buyers either.

that is because of DRM. It restricts media to its own country of origin much of the time. Just another great way DRM affects our lives.

 

[Harbinger_]

This isn't going to last long. Amazon is incapable of doing a good job competing with Steam in my opinion. They don't have the drive or initiative to truly bother. The fact that they are restricting this to the United States proves this more than anything.

Since I don't care about Steam, am in Brazil, and have a crap computer that can't run Braid, I probably shouldn't care at all at this and have no need to comment, but I need to point out that the limitation to the US is probably not so much a case of 'not bothering' as a legal issue, since Amazon doesn't sell physical media to foreign buyers either.

I didn't say they weren't bothering but the thing is there are companies like Apple that are able to sell foreign media to other countries and buyers.

 

[Nova5]

Meh, I've never been a fan of Amazon's kindle bookstore (I either grab mine from iTunes, or independent stores and load them to my reader). Somehow I doubt their handling of games will be any more attractive.

The major advantage Steam had (especially when it opened) was that it had a game studio (with its own large back catalog of exclusive titles) to help get it started. Furthermore, a company that deals exclusively with videogames will likely have an easier time appealing to the market. Unless Amazon's decision makers are well-versed on what the gaming public actually wants (through experience, not marketing departments), I don't see this lasting.

 

[Kraiiit]

I think I'll stick to Steam, but can't hurt to have competition. Should keep Valve sharp, and more importantly, prices low.

 

[archaicmalevolence]

It's smart what they've done with it though in that they've made the games that are available on steam as well much cheaper than the steam counterpart. Though steam probably has better services and more support from the community etc, as this thing amazon is doing is pretty out of the blue.

 

[rsvp42]

Spoiler

Steam has the digital distribution thing well in the bag because they do damn near everything right with regards to the customer.

The only place they lose marks is with customer support, and even that is slowly improving... although it would be nice to have a human being to call up and speak to.

No other service offers in one complete package:

Unlimited downloads of your purchased Title
2 special sales a week and massive deals on holidays
A clean, convenient and easy to use marketplace and library management utility
Automatic Updates
Cloud Saves
IM Features
IRC Style Community Chat
Guilds & User Blogs
Easy joining of friends games.
The ability to preload money on your account
The ability to gift games to friends
4 Pack deals
Unobtrusive DRM
Built in Anti-Cheat software
UI Modding support
Game Modding Support
Active User Forums for every game and publisher
Demo's
Free Games
Tabs to easily sort new releases, top sellers, coming soon and special offers
A working search function
Convenient market place browsing
Access to game manuals without having to purchase the game
News related specifically to the games you own
The ability to gift spare copies to friends
The ability to add many retail CD keys
The ability to add non-utility games and programs to the users Library
The ability to review and suggest games for friends
A recommendations feature that suggests games you may enjoy
PC and MAC titles where you buy one version and receive both
Automatic Graphic Driver Updates (For AMD/ATI only)
A listing of all your transactions showing when you purchased a title and how much you personally paid for it.
Offline mode so that once you have activated a game once online you may use it without an internet connection.
Achievements
Tracked User stats such as hours played
Hardware surveys that let you trace adoption trends within PC gamers
Backup features to allow you to burn your games to disc

Steam offers a ton of services to the end users, all of which help in offsetting the lack of physical box, manual and game disc at the time of purchase.

This is why I own 214 games on Steam and only 6 on Impulse and none on Amazon/Best Buy/Gamestop digital download services.

My thoughts exactly. For all the raging against DRM I see on these forums, people seem to forget how awesome a service like Steam is. It's so much beyond the copy protection, which is almost completely unobtrusive. I'm sure there are specific reasons why specific people might have problems, but overall it seems amazing. Haven't had any problem, myself.

 

[rsvp42]

Also this could take some of that retailer pressure off Steam, assuming that's still an issue.

 

[Dana22]

A little competition cant hurt players.

 

[mattaui]

They'll have to try pretty hard to get me to start fragmenting my digital purchases like that. Part of the beauty of Steam is having it so seamlessly update across all my various PCs and laptops I'm likely to be using, and even if Amazon's client does that, I don't want to fool with another one. It's the same reason I never buy from Impulse or D2D (or I should say, never bought from more than once) because it's just an extra step in the process and I found myself wishing I'd had everything centralized in Steam.

That being said, I buy plenty of real stuff from Amazon all the time, so if they can make it work and make it attractively priced, I might just give it a go.

 

[Pholark]

Amazon won't steal too many, if any consumers from Steam's market. True, they may be slashing prices like crazy but Steam has great deal and offers dependability that Amazon will have a big problem producing this late into Steam's game.