Impulse Phase IV rolling out this week

Stardock today revealed the fourth phase of its digital distribution platform, Impulse.

In addition to providing users a place to quickly purchase, download, install and update thousands of available games, applications, and utilities to their machine, Impulse is adding some friendly features that will make playing multiplayer and finding people to play multiplayer a lot easier.

Impulse Phase IV is part of the ongoing series of major feature updates for the digital distribution platform. The new client released today presents a more streamlined experience for managing installed programs, has a much faster and easier to use store, and continues to improve on its download speeds to customers.

But the real meat of today’s announcement is a new Impulse feature called “Ready to Play.” This new free program allows users to create instant virtual communities based on profiles and quickly get multiplayer games going with like-minded people.

“Imagine Match.com or eHarmony for PC gamers where users enter in their gaming preferences and some profile data and with that data, Ready to Play can recommend other gamers with similar gaming preferences. My idea of what is ‘fun’ in an online game is probably different from that of say a teenager,” said Wardell. “With Ready to Play, now you can quickly get games going with ‘recommended’ friends.”

Ready to Play will go into wide beta as part of the Impulse Phase IV roll-out this week.

Xfire Communities go live, game publishers sign on

Today, Xfire announced the launch of Xfire Communities, a new communication platform geared towards game publishers that supposedly gives them the ability to utilize Xfire features like Live Broadcasting, Instant Communication and Video Capture for events. Several publishers have already started Official Communities on Xfire including Funcom’s Age of Conan, Gamehi’s Sudden Attack, Cybersport’s Football Superstars and Aeria Games’ DragonSky and Wolf Team.

Gamers will apparently benefit from the new Xfire Communities features which include unlimited game tracking statistics, news, activity reports, event calendars, reminders, live streaming broadcasts, archived video, forums, screenshots, email access and instant message alerts.

For more info on Xfire, check out xfire.com.

GameRanger celebrates ten years of multiplayer matchmaking

Mac and PC multiplayer matchmaking service GamerRanger will be celebrating its 10th birthday this month. GameRanger is inviting everyone to join in, bring their friends, and play online with some of their favorite games this coming Sunday. GameRanger launched in 1999 providing matchmaking support for 11 Mac games, and today supports 542 PC games and 181 Mac games. GameRanger has lasted longer than most if not all other gaming services including DWANGO, TEN, Mplayer, Kali, HEAT.NET, WON.net, Zone.com, etc.

While that fact could probably be disputed, GameRanger at least deserves credit for continuing to support its users by providing multiplayer support for new games over the last ten years.

you can check it out by visiting www.GameRanger.com.