Interesting read.  I didn't know the primary reason for Elemental's failure was that too many good employees were tied up keeping Impulse going.  I didn't get it, as the reviews and customer feedback on the forums made it pretty clear it wasn't a solid product; however I will keep my eye on the sequel now that it's being given full attention and a complete rework.

Sins Rebellion beta is looking decent so far, but I can't get too excited on their other project as free2play titles never are.  I'd much rather pay $50-60 up front and get the complete game.  I understand the business sense behind it, as F2P has proven to be a massive money maker with many MMO's turning around and making MORE money after going F2P, and of course the juggernaut that is League of Legends; but as a gamer I obviously can't approve of business models designed around 'pay to win'.  I've heard ugly things Activation (there frankly is no Blizzard anymore, only Activation) may be planning for Diablo 3 to milk people, a game that already will cost $60 up front.  I really hope this microtransaction/DLC spamming isn't the future of video games.

what I found amusing in the report is the large DROP in Impulse use after the sale to Gamestop....  Interesting

And I still refuse to pay monthly for ANY game I play.  It is against my principles.  But that is getting off topic.

Glad Stardock is getting their talent back on target with what they need to be doing.

Indeed. If you try to do too many things at once you invariably lose focus & the thing you should focus on is what you have the most passion for. Offloading Impulse was the right move I think.

what I found amusing in the report is the large DROP in Impulse use after the sale to Gamestop....  Interesting

Eh, it's not really that shocking.  Most PC gamers have little reason to trust Gamestop.  Everyone I know that used Impulse, myself included, have not used Impulse for anything more than re-downloading something since Gamestop took over.  Not to mention Gamestop getting the rights to many more games is unimpressive; Stardock's Impulse sensibly didn't carry Steamworks games because it made no sense (why buy off Impulse if I need to install and run Steam to play it?).  I can't imagine anyone is buying Steamworks (or other DRM schemes like with Battlefield 3 and ME3) titles off of Impulse now.  Sure, Gamestop increased the number of titles in the store by a huge amount.  But everyone's buying them directly from Steam/EA instead.

Whole thing is just win-win for Stardock.  They get rid of a losing proposition (nobody will ever touch Steam/Steamworks unless Valve makes some colossal PR blunders), their conflict of interest with Steam and other providers is gone so they can sell on other services, any they can go back to making games and apps instead of running a service.

Funny though about the doom and gloom over Windows 8.  Haven't seen it myself, but MS seems to unable to avoid the curse of making every other Windows OS crap.  It's like they try something new, fail hard, then release a 'new' version 2-3 years later that just fixes all the issues with the earlier attempt.

I want my impulse survey2011 10% off coupon please 

Seriously now,

impulse were growing up and i suppose it was bringing money to stardock. It consumes time, indeed, but with more money incoming, more employees should have been hired to take care of it. 

And you could have sold stardock games on steam as well. Even valve started to sell their games on gamestop impulse now, why couldnt you have done this as well? Selling Sins through steam and giving an 10% discount on impulse sells at launch would have gotten both consumers (steam and impulse) = more money.

Specifically, the “dumbification” of games that we’ve seen over the past decade
appears to be creating an expanding market opportunity for those developers who are willing to create games
that cater to individuals who are interested in a complex game experience but also want high production
standards.

This is a real opportunity, and a segment of the market that the largest developers either do not see or do not care about right now. But I would be wary about the "high production standards" part of this analysis. The big boys are hitting $30-50 mil for their major franchises at this point, and "individuals who are interested in a complex game experience" simply don't number enough to cover that kind of cost. Personally, I think that the market that Stardock intends to chase has an expectations problem at the moment: They want the high production values of an EA/Activision creation, but they want this targeted at a market that can't hope to repay the expense of making it. This is the biggest problem right now with what Stardock has described as the "middle market", and I think it's going to have to wipe out at least one publisher before customers start regaining their sense of perspective. So for the sake of "anti-dumbification" gamers everywhere, I hope that Stardock is prepared to see some contrarian indicators before this strategy starts paying off.

And BTW, Iron Lore was talking about basically the same thing 2 months ago. How are you guys not publishing Grim Dawn?