yeah i've seen them in supermarkets and bricks and morter game stores thats why i went looking for online stores :P they're supposedly aimed at the netbook market.

BTW Puzzle Quest 2 is a really great and addictive game. I can't stop myself playing it. It is a way better than the first one.

How's the AI? The first one was absolute cheating arse (at least for the DS version).

I am playing the game on normal difficulty and Ai is fine. Yes, sometimes it is cheating but not like the first game. I only restarted 4 or 5 battles. I played 8 hours.

Good to know. I might pick it up next month then.

I think the retailers are kind of in a very close competition to Steam or D2D. They both sell the same games. For some of them the difference is, that the retailers offer disc check based DRM, while the download shops offer activation DRM. For other games, even the retailers sell the activation DRM games, so they basically just sell the serial number and the disc is purely ornamental. Then its almost exactly the same. As long as they make profit with every sale of a serial key, its okay to do it. As a side effect, customers don't want to change stores too often, so its always good to bind a customer and offer him everything he might want. Only amazon really could cut down on shipping discs and do it the D2D way.
Btw: amazon seems to hire programmers for a shop system like Steam. Seems interesting to me: http://gamersyndrome.com/2010/video-games/amazon-hiring-for-digital-distribution-service/

That's why I stated 'direct competition'. To avoid any confusion. Anyway...
Amazon sell physical products. Some downloads. But mostly they're about physical products. Steam, well you know about Steam. So there's some competition there. As Amazon delve further into downloads that's only going to increase. But for now there's no logical reason for them to be fussed about a game including another company's storefront.

I'm waiting for Steam gift cards.
Seriously, why couldn't they sell them? Toss them up on the racks at Best Buy with gift cards for every other electronic service in existence.