Impulse/GameStop Interview

Joystiq interviews Stardock’s head man Brad Wardell on the recent sale of his digital download arm Impulse to GameStop, noting the company will still be using Impulse exclusively for digital retail for the foreseeable future, and noting this is a “huge win for PC gamers”.

“Last year, because Impulse’s revenue was growing so much, more resources were being dedicated to it,” said Wardell. “We were either going to have to become a retailer, or we were going to have to find some other way.” Wardell decided to find another company to run Impulse as an online retailer, but he wanted to be picky about who should do it. “At that point, who would be the best partner who was already a retailer? Not some startup, not someone who’s getting into retail, but someone who knows retail and who knows games, who would provide the biggest boost to the PC market?”

Of course, GameStop fit the bill. “Impulse obviously is not the number one by far in terms of market share,” admitted Wardell, “but it has three, four million users and is growing rapidly. So when you combine our technology, which is start-of-the-art and continuing, with GameStop’s user base and retail experience, you have a pretty compelling story.”

They had to sell it because it was making too much money? I’m not sure if anyone is going to believe that one.

As for the “huge win”, I’d argue that digital download has simply become too big for a retailer like GameStop to ignore, and the huge win comes from this process having been successfully carried out by Steam, Impulse and others over the past few years.