The large publisher
Electronic Arts has announced that they have joined Valve’s digital distribution platform Steam, bringing notable titles to the service such as Spore, Warhammer Online, Mass Effect and Need For Speed Undercover.
In the next month the publisher will add Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, Mirror’s Edge, and Dead Space as well.
Steam currently has 15 million active user accounts globally.
“We are pleased to extend our holiday titles to gamers worldwide via Steam — a revolutionary technology that is one of the game industry’s most successful digital distribution services,” added EA COO John Pleasants of the deal.
Also notably, it appears as if Spore will have its DRM removed, according to this post on the Steam forums: Does Spore still have DRM?
Result for: distribution platform
The star hip-hop producer Timbaland has announced that he has made a deal with Verizon Wireless to produce the first ever “mobile album” which will be exclusively available on V Cast.
For the deal, Timbaland will produce one song per month for every month during 2008, each time working with a different artist and touring the country on the Verizon Mobile Recording Studio Bus.
The hitmaker says the deal will help him reach out to more fans because “every place don’t get a CD (but) everybody has a mobile phone.”
He also added, “Just producing a mobile album has never been done. I’m the first to ever do it.”
Despite recent events in which artists have left labels in efforts to reach new fans, Timbaland says he will be sticking by Interscope. In fact, Interscope artists will be the only musicians he will be working with for his mobile album.
From Verizon’s point of view, the deal is a “marriage of promotional opportunity and a large distribution platform,” director of digital music Ed Ruth says. “Our goal is to show the music industry that we’re truly a viable distribution platform for them.”
Each new Track will be released as a full length download or ringtone and will be available only through V Cast for $1.99 USD.
