Aeria Games Ignite Beta Launches

Link

Digital platforms are gaining in popularity, even more so are ones with a social twist. In the past Aeria Games along with a lot of others released downloaders for their games, some required you to log in while others didn't. They really didn't feel all that useful and more of a added thing you had installed that you really didn't need.  Aeria Games wants to do something a bit different and add a platform that allows you to download all of the games from their portal, and communicate with friends while your at it. Sort of like Steam; but without all of the features and the games are only ones that they host, but this also an opportunity for developers trying to get access to players for their games.

As put by them:

“Ignite was created by Aeria Games to provide a comprehensive, easy-to-use distribution mechanism for free-to-play developers while giving our players one-click access to their favorite games, community features, and support,” Terry Ngo, chief technology officer of Aeria Games, said in a statement. “As the first application of its kind, we expect that Ignite will provide a valuable platform for developers wanting to reach core gamers.”

I did download it and give it a bit of a go, and it is decent. You can easily navigate and go to the various pages within the client itself for their downloadable games. The client already supports nine different languages, and the ability to add and message other players. It still could use some work however, they did say it was to help connect players, but I haven't seen any ability to find those with similar interests in games. A lot of the links also take you back to your browser, which it would have been nice to have even a materialistic version in the client. It already has you log into the client with your account, the ability to browse the forums from within it shouldn't be too much to ask for, or even to post.

All in all it is nice, but it still could use some fine tuning and other work to be done with it. If they get to that it could be a good client for active aeria gamers to use, but right now since a lot of it re-directs to their site, and there is a messaging feature on their site, it doesn't seem too worth it yet.