In response to thousands of frustrated gamers who have been unable to buy bleem! products in their local stores, bleem! co-founder David Herpolsheimer this week launched bleem!DIRECT (www.bleemDIRECT.com), an online-store dedicated to emulation-related products. bleemdirect.com is the first store to offer the highly-anticipated bleemcast! for Metal Gear Solid and Tekken 3 titles, and offers a discount of $1.00 off each CD pre-ordered through this weekend. The new bleemcast! titles are currently in production and are expected to ship as early as next week.

bleem!DIRECT was first conceived earlier this year, when Barnes & Noble-owned Babbages, Inc., the nation’s largest specialty-software chain, joined forces with Sony Computer Entertainment to pull bleem!’s products off the market. At Sony’s "request", Babbages removed bleemcast! for Gran Turismo 2 from its Babbages, Software Etc., Funcoland and GameStop stores, in spite of strong public demand and over the objections of its own customers and store personnel.

"When Babbages threw in with Sony, we lost half our market, literally overnight. We knew we had to find another channel to meet consumer demand," said Herpolsheimer. "By forming bleem!DIRECT as a separate company, it lets bleem, inc. concentrate on what it does best – making great software – and gives bleem!DIRECT the flexibility to offer more than just bleem!. We want to offer other hard-to-find emulators, PlayStation games, accessories, t-shirts … whatever our customers demand."

But bleemdirect.com isn’t just for U.S. customers, Herpolsheimer is quick to point out: "As hard as it’s been to find bleem! here in the U.S., we know it can be even tougher overseas. So we’ve worked hard to be able to ship bleem! most anywhere in the world, and to keep international shipping costs down. In fact, our international shipping charges are lower than a lot of stores’ domestic rates."

Expectations are high for the new online store, says Herpolsheimer. "It’s clear that there are still plenty of Dreamcast fans out there, and they want bleemcast!. Electronics Boutique still lists bleemcast! for GT2 as a best-seller, a full five months after its launch. And judging from the response we’ve already received at bleemdirect.com, we expect bleemcast! for MGS and TK3 to do even better."