The BBC has an article that looks at the marketplace for digitially distributed games. Hot on the heels of the success of Xbox Live and the announcement of Steam's 13,000,000th sign-up, it seems like this wave of the future may be coming sooner than some had thought.

Steam, an online distribution platform for videogame content, has signed up more than 13 million users, the system's owners Valve has said.

More than 150 PC games can be downloaded via Steam and the system has also been used to automate more than 2,500 updates to existing games.

Digital distribution of game content is a growing segment of the industry.

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have all started online services for downloading games onto consoles.

Read more on BBC.