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Steam goes casual gaming

Posted: 2006-08-23 04:13am
by Ace Pace
The fuck?
Today Valve announced that it will begin delivering titles from PopCap Games via Steam. The announcement includes a quote from Valve co-founder and president Gabe Newell saying, "The addition of PopCap Games' expansive library of leading casual games is an important step for the growth of Steam and direct distribution channels." 17 casual games from PopCap will be ready for download on Steam starting August 30.

PopCap Games is best known for Bejeweled and Zuma. The company generates 175 million downloads a month. Steam is typically known for the digital distribution of games for a dedicated hardcore audience, such as Half-Life 2. The addition of casual games to the Steam library just goes to show how much more traction casual gaming is gaining.
Casual gaming is pretty huge, but I'm not sure if Steam can handle casual gaming demands. I mean, hard core gamers will number in tens of thousands, hundreds possibly, but casual gaming gets users in the millions.

Posted: 2006-08-23 08:00am
by InnocentBystander
Correct me if I'm wrong, but these games are also several orders of magnitude smaller, right? 10-50 megs, compared to say, several gigs? Steam has the capacity to deliver over 25 gigs per second, I think they'll be okay.