Steam To Sell More Than Just Games
As far as the PC industry is concerned, video games are one of the biggest money makers out there. And while PC games may bring in some serious cash into the PC industry, there’s still a market out there on the PC that’s been practically untapped. We all have tons of other software that we use from time to time that isn’t gaming related, and Steam is now planning on getting in on this market.
Starting September 5th, non-game software titles are going to start appearing on the Steam Store. Though no particular names have been mentioned, the titles that will be appearing are going to “range from creativity to productivity”. Steam isn’t just going to be used to purchase the software, as many of the launch titles will be taking advantage of popular Steamworks features, such as “easy installation, automatic updating, and the ability to save your work to your personal Steam Cloud.” The use of the Steam Cloud for some of that software will be huge, especially for people who do a lot of traveling but can’t always take a computer to do their work with them.
The new software will also be allowed to take advantage of Steam Greenlight, the new system that’s being run to let consumers check out and express their level of interest (or lack thereof) about a particular software title. Personally, I think this is going to be the key to making sure that this non-game software gamble works out, since it’ll give the people a chance to tell Valve exactly what kinds of products they want on Steam. Valve really has a chance at growing from just a gaming company to something even bigger with this new initiative. I wonder how long it’s going to take for EA to do the same thing…
