Two From Strategy First On Steam February 7

[Evil Avatar]

Valve sends along a short Press Release announcing that two Strategy First titles will appear on Steam (http://steampowered.com) on February 7th.

Dangerous Waters and Space Empires IV Deluxe Offered Directly to Millions

Bellevue, WA. January 10, 2005 -- Software publisher Strategy First Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Silverstar Holdings, Ltd. (NASDAQ: SSTR), and Valve Corporation, a leading entertainment and technology studio, are pleased to announce the Steam launch date for Dangerous Waters and Space Empires IV Deluxe.

Steam, Valve's online platform for digital content distribution and management, offers developers and publishers the chance to offer their creations directly to millions of gamers around the world.

S.C.S - Dangerous Waters(tm) is a groundbreaking naval simulation game, and will be available via Steam for $39.99. Space Empires IV Deluxe, a grand strategy title in the space 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) genre, will also be available via Steam for just $19.99.

Those with an active Steam account will be able to pre-purchase the games beginning January 24 and save 10%.

More titles from Strategy First will be coming to Steam later in 2006. Stay tuned for more details on those releases.

[MasterEvilAce]

Never heard of the company nor the games before..

In a way it seems sort of like Steam is there to make money, without having to spend money (creating physical items).. possibly for low budget/no budget games... (Aside from HL obviously)

[fitbabits]

$40 for Dangerous Waters sounds a bit steep - especially when you consider there's no packaging involved. Still, it's nice to see Valve and Steam branching out a little.

[Citizen Philip]

These titles do not draw large audiences in the first place. Not having to make a physical box and the associated production costs: and not having to deal with Walmart/EB about their price gouging for using up their precious shelf-space is a total win win situation for games that have a niche audience.

[Undertakr]

Well, 'not having a huge audience' isn't true about Space Empires. They've made over a million dollars off of Space Empires and that was before the last version of Space Empires 'shipped'. Not bad for a shareware game.

BTW, if you haven't played Space Empires, it's a pretty awesome game. Get 8 or 10 of your friends and play by email. It's a blast and worth every penny of the $20.

- Takr

[Steve_Erhardt]

Tempting on both, though I agree with fitbabits... $40 is a little rich for no physical material... wasn't part of the idea behind Steam the fact they could sell for less and still makes as much or even more money since they didn't have to muck with publishers and printing and general production costs? Make it $25-30 and I'll bite. For $40, I want that nice thick printed manual they were offering when they were selling it through battlefront.com.

$20 for Space Empires IV sounds good, though I'm not overly familiar with the franchise.

[MasterEvilAce]

Tempting on both, though I agree with fitbabits... $40 is a little rich for no physical material... wasn't part of the idea behind Steam the fact they could sell for less and still makes as much or even more money since they didn't have to muck with publishers and printing and general production costs? Make it $25-30 and I'll bite. For $40, I want that nice thick printed manual they were offering when they were selling it through battlefront.com.

$20 for Space Empires IV sounds good, though I'm not overly familiar with the franchise.
They draw you in and then screw you. All companies do this. Look at all we can do! Join our service.

Yeah, you know what? New gameplan. Here's a new EULA for ya.. oh prices are the same? Oh well bandwith isn't free, you know. In a few years you won't remember, anyways :) Thanks for your business, come again.