In one of the most brutal and honest interviews I've seen in a long time, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell lays out the state of PC gaming on the table.  You can tell the man has a chip on his shoulder, and he's not afraid to tell the world about digital distribution, Microsoft's shortcomings, and the fact that company's flat out lie about their sales.

With digital distribution becoming more popular, it seems that most have been clamoring that "retail is dead" - but that's simply not the case.  There's a reason we haven't seen numbers from Steam, Direct2Drive, Impulse and other digital platforms - they simply aren't as impressive.

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Stardock has announced the official launch of their Impulse Client Phase IV.  The update brings a completely redesigned interface which closely resembles features from Windows 7.  The entire store has been redesigned, and there's now a rating system for games purchased which appear on the store as well.   

With the launch of the client comes beta sign ups for the Stardock's Ready to Play match making system.  We got a hands on demo of this at PAX 09 and came away fairly impressed.

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Stardock and NVIDIA have announced a brand new version of Impulse today.  Dubbed the "NVIDIA Edition," it will provide NVIDIA graphics card owners seamless driver updates and other optimizations for their PC.  

Impulse is Stardock's digital distribution platform for games and software, and is slowly evolving into a social and community hub as well.  The next iteration of the software even promises match making abilities across all games - not just Impulse games like Sins of a Solar Empire.  

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Stardock's Impulse looks to trump Steam's PC gaming portal and digital content delivery system by adding matchmaking into its newest update. The new update will bring like-minded gamers together by detecting each game that you play, constructing a profile based on how you prefer to play games, and suggesting other those other players.

In this sense, Stardock -- the development studio responsible for co-op title Sins of a Solar Empire -- is taking data similar to what Co-Optimus' match-up system collects and mashing that up with in-game connectivity options.

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If you are looking forward to the upcoming RTS/RPG Demigod, then you are going to need to get on Stardock's Impulse service.  Similar to Steam, Impulse is a digital marketplace and community platform for gamers to buy games and play online.

After only 9 months, the service is about to eclipse 1 million members, and to celebrate Stardock is going to give out a $4000 gaming PC to member #1 Million.  Oh you sly dog Stardock, that's a clever way to boost sign-ups!

Impulse will be getting some pretty slick upgrades in the near future as well.
  

Next month Stardock plans to release the third major update to Impulse since its release which will include features such as Impulse Anywhere (ability to download your title from a web page on one PC and then install on your home PC), and the full release of Impulse Reactor, which will provide in-game features from Impulse seamlessly and an updated Impulse client with a host of tweaks and changes.

Sounds good to me!