News Penny Arcade launches Greenhouse

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/04/03/penny_arcade_launches_greenhouse/1

The Penny Arcade team has announced it will soon be launching Greenhouse, an online distribution platform for indie games.

 

didn't steam start as a distribution platform for indie games?
which leads to my second question: why not just use steam?

 

I don't see the need for a steam competitor for small indie games when Steam has been making itself far more available to the little guy of late.

 

I think another platform is sort of a waste. I do appreciate the efforts to make indie games available, but I feel Steam has already covered this to a certain extent. I'm sure they are working on improving Steam to make it even more open.

 

*puts economist hat on*
But increased competition will lead to reduced prices and seeing as it will be the indie developer with the market power not the customer or distribution system it will result in a reduced rate of commission charged if (and its a big if) both distribution systems are of an equal size. There is also further economic modeling to suggest that increased competition increases the size of the market and therefore there will be more consumers and more developers.
*takes hat off*

 

True, but if both offered similar commission deals right now, wouldn't you go with steam? It's a much larger established userbase, and good indie games can be really well represented and end up successful. Take Audiosurf for example. It had rave reviews, sure, but would it have had as many if it wasn't on a distribution system that was already installed on a large userbase?

 

waste of time, steam is more than good enough at everything and is good to indie games already

 

Competition is good, and I think the Penny Arcade guys are in a great position to push for a better marketplace. If they can encourage developers to be more multi-platform (IE linux and mac compatible) then this is a good thing.

 

i agree.

 

Its getting a bit annoying having to run all these digital distribution programs, Doesn't Supreme commander come with one? and i believe there are a few others

I sort of wish people would all just use steam so we only have to deal with one resource hog, but on the other hand, steam is hardly amazing (overpriced games, buggy, slow, windows only, only supports IE)