Gabe Newell's phone has been ringing off the hook for the last few weeks, and, surprisingly, he credits Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Newell's company, Valve Software, has benefited from all the buzz swirling around digital distribution of late, which has been embraced by the Big Three as a major cog for their respective next generation consoles. "In the last two weeks, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have all said that digital distribution is key to their futures, so that's helped us," Newell says.

Indeed, it seems that anytime someone mentions online content delivery for games, they inevitably cite Steam, one of the first and arguably the most well-known digital distribution system in the industry. For example, Dennis Fong, a former professional gamer and now chief gaming officer at Xfire, applauds Valve's pioneering effort in digital distribution. "The console guys say this is revolutionary, but Valve is already doing this with Steam for the PC," he says. "Steam and Half-Life have absolutely propelled the industry farther than anyone else."

It wasn't that long ago that Steam was under fire from doubters and critics. Before launching in 2002, many thought it would be nothing more than a tool to deliver patches for games, rather than the games and expansion packs themselves. The digital distribution system surely had its problems in the early days, such as privacy concerns, stability issues and network bottlenecks. But after the rocky Half-Life 2 launch in 2004, Valve ironed out the wrinkles in Steam.

Now console makers are following suit. Microsoft looks to take Xbox Live Arcade - which offers smaller, classic games for downloading - to the next level with Xbox 360. And at the 2006 Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Jose last week, both Sony and Nintendo played up their forthcoming online services for the PlayStation 3 and Revolution, respectively. Indeed, Steam has permeated the console game space, and digital distribution is the talk of the town. Can worldwide domination be far behind?