GameStop details plans for 'becoming a technology company'Stop Giving This Company Your Money!!! LOL J/K, more competition is good.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/01/gamestop-details-plans-for-impulse-and-spawn-labs-says-its-be/Well, it looks like GameStop's plans following its acquisition of Impulse and Spawn Labs may be even grander than we had suspected. At an investor conference today, GameStop said flat out that it is "becoming a technology company," and that it does indeed plan to introduce a cloud-based gaming service similar to OnLive as a result of the Spawn Labs acquisition, while Impulse will be used to "compete fiercely" with Steam.
I've never used Impulse for DD PC Gaming, but isn't everyone already pretty insignificant thanks to Steam and their dominance in the PC DD game?
Recent purchases of Impulse & Spawn Labs means GameStop is on the offensive after watching Borders & Blockbuster drop to their knees due to Forward Thinking Competition from Amazon/B&N (Kindle/Nook eReader) & Netflix/RedBox (Movies in the mail, Streaming titles & $1 Rentals), and I don't blame them for wanting to stay relevant, but you would have to think that most Publishers won't show them the same favortism that Steam get because of their resale business that so many publishers already don't like.
But that's just the start of things. According to the Dallas Morning News, GameStop also plans to expand the gaming service to a variety of mobile devices, and it's apparently even entertaining the idea of a GameStop-branded tablet, saying that "if we feel like we could do a better job of making a tablet, we'll do that." Of course, some of that is still quite a ways off, but GameStop will be taking its first steps fairly soon -- it's already showed off a demo of how the service will be integrated into its website (see above, complete with a "try it now" option), and it plans to begin a public beta sometime this year before rolling out the full service early next year.
Taking on OnLive with streaming gaming is somewhere they might be able to get a foot hold into as that business is still fairly unknown, but we still don't know if that model of gaming is gonna survive the consumer test since entirely based on a solid & speedy internet connection and also requires a monthly fee.
Also how are they gonna stream Console games to the PC? I'm not so sure Sony nor Nintendo would like that.
I'd also be interested in seeing what Gamestop can bring to tablets since Apple and Android have that space pretty filled up at the moment.
What do all of you think of GameStop evolving to survive?