The creative minds over at Penny Arcade (we bet you *have* seen their gaming cartoons!) just announced the beta of a new digital distribution platform which is called Greenhouse and was developed together with Hothead Games, where Ron Gilbert is currently working. They also announced that the upcoming episodes of their adventures in the universe of Penny Arcade will only be distributed over this platform for the time being; but there might be a retail version of it later, the options are kept open on this one.

However this is not the only thing that Greenhouse seems to have been developed for. In an interview over at Wired Mike Grahulic and Jerry Holkins state that they are already on the look-out for other indie games that might well have slipped under the radar til now and that could really do with some more publicity and gamers playing them. So what Greenhouse could at some point in the future become is a Steam for Indie-Games. Holkins and Grahulic are not really talking facts at the moment, but they seem to have big plans with Greenhouse, if you take the following statement into closer consideration:

Over at Hothead Games the aim of Greenhouse is summed up as follows:

Instead of only hearing about good indie games (and there are more of them out there than we all might know/think) once a year during the Independent Games Festival Penny Arcade and Hothead Games could well be on the verge of finding a way to make those games known to a wider audience. Which will, I am pretty sure of that, also include Ron Gilbert's new project over at Hothead Games: Deathspank.

So, basically: We might get to know about even more games that we'd like to play in the future. What some publisher therefore definitely has to come up with next please is a digital distribution platform for quite simply ... much more time for gaming.