Valve's Gabe Newell Speaks on Console Development

DelitaTheFridge writes "Gabe Newell, of Valve fame, criticizes Microsoft and Sony on how difficult it will be for next-gen developers to produce games on their upcoming hardware. He is especially critical of Sony's model, where code written to run on Cell will be very hard to port to other systems, and vice versa. Will this bring upon a new era of PC Game superiority? Only time will tell. In the meantime, Newell says he believes that Steam-like systems will be extremely helpful for developers on the new consoles due to their ability to provide updates and new content."

Comments

Steam.

[Poromenos1]

I don't think systems like Steam are viable in the long run. They'll be successful for a bit while they manage to force them on us, but in the long run they're just too restrictive. The market is (hopefully) going to reject them.

Re:Pots and Kettles

[88NoSoup4U88]

You mean the one that forces you to "update" before you can play its game? This system is making a player's life difficult too.

Yeah, I really hate it how it automatically, within notime (on a decent DSL connection) brings me my updates to my game(s) : I much rather go back to the good old days to connecting to a server, only to discover there's a new patch out I which I have to download.
Then I will have to find that patch with a decent download and no ridiculous artificial ques (yes, I am talking about you Fileplanet), and then install it. And all do this within half an hour... max.

Ohwait, I forgot to add the sarcasm tag.

If you're talking about the online activation ; Yes. it sucks : But over here on Slashdot the tendency seems to be to focus on those 'negative' points (and no, I am not losing -any- of my privacy by using Steam), rather than the few great things Steam added (eg. IM-messaging/playing chess ingame, ingame server browsers, automatical updates, a-way-to-say-f*ck-you-to-the-publishers)

Re:Pots and Kettles

[arkhan_jg]

You mean disadvantages like these?

- having to have an internet connection to play the single player game, and spending several hours waiting for it to decrypt when I bought it release day
- how they first required both steam activation AND a dvd check for the store-bought version
- that I can't resell my copy of HL2 when I get bored with it
- that when steam goes belly-up, I can't play (had that problem at a LAN party, massive counter-strike problems for lots of people as the net connection couldn't handle steam logins for 200 ppl)
- if valve goes out of business, I lose the ability to play the game I paid for
- mandatory patches tying up my internet connection unexpectedly, a real problem for dialup users
- piracy protection that does nothing to stop hacked copies showing up on torrent sites, but makes me jump through hoops
-randomly losing my installed game files, forcing me to spend hours downloading and reinstalling the game via steam (happened to me twice now)

I'm sorry, but these far outweigh any good points of steam. I for one won't be purchasing any new games from valve that require it. I'm a customer, not a damn lab rat. Make steam optional so you can use it for the handy features, such as easy patch download, and purchase games through it if you wish. But don't sell something in a box in a retail store, then turn round and treat it like a rental.