Slashdot Mirror
Valve Boss Expects Apple To Challenge Game Consoles
Speaking at a panel during the WTIA TechNW conference, Valve CEO Gabe Newell had some interesting things to say about his expectations for the console business. Quoting:
"The living room is the domain of the consoles, and its ability to exist independently from the other platforms is gone, Newell said. Newell expects Apple to disrupt the living room platform with a new product that will challenge consoles, although he doesn't have any particular knowledge of that new product. 'I suspect Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people's expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear,' he said.
Newell reiterated his concerns about a closed model being the 'wrong philosophical approach' but one that people will emulate because of the success of Apple and Xbox Live."
Valve have the distribution mechanism and the software library in Steam, why don't they release a reference Valve Box then?
Hide windows with a pretty dedicated UI and sell it cheap. It's Amazon's business model for the Kindle and it seems to be working quite well for them.
Isn't Steam basically the iTunes of PC games though?
Pippin 2 here we come!
Summation 2
I'm playing Dark Souls 3 on my iPad 4, and after dying 25 times against a boss I finally win. Before I can save, the battery dies.
I chuck it against the wall in rage and it shatters into more pieces than my dream of ever beating that game, and it sings Daisy Bell in a synthesized Steve Jobs' voice.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Free the Mouse!
Three buttons and a mechanical scroll button!
And where can I plug in a keyboard while we're at it.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Newell reiterated his concerns about a closed model being the 'wrong philosophical approach' --- I guess that means he doesnt like the idea of this happening any more than i do then ...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Steam doesn't prevent you from installing software on your PC. It even let you add your non steam game in it's library. I'm sure a "Steam console" wouln't be locked down like a PS3 or XBox as I doubt people at Valve would enjoy playing cat and mouse with tinkerer trying to break their boxes to install homebrewed software.
So long as you're called Zev, or Xev. But when it finds a cyborg body, goes crazy and starts chasing after you shouting "You're not pretty, Stanley H. Tweedle, but you're my kind of not pretty", that's when you have problems.
Where the current manufacturers, frankly, suck. Especially at marrying hardware and software. Like the phone market before iPhone. (Notice that the one competing OS was made by a software-ish company, and not any manufacturers). I don't see this problem in the console market. If anything, I don't see what apple could bring to the table there.
If there is one line of attack, perhaps it would be via Apple TV for the very casual market. You could give them their own lightweight controllers that double as remotes, and also make iPhones the controllers using their accelerometers like iPad does and an app.
It certainly won't be for the hardcore gamers, but that wouldn't really be something economical for Apple to crack nor their forte. On the upside, you could bring all the iPad games over to the TV.
Surely Apple TV is Apple's Living Room device, Apple have never really seemed to care about gaming beyond casual easy to pick up/put down type games.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Wait, I can already do that and its not exactly going to threaten a game console. If anything most of the games on the iPad feel as if I am dealing with a Readers Digest Condensed "Game". There are some involved games, one of them imported from DOS days named Ascendancy, but for most part the market is saturated with games which spam you with pay upgrades. I certainly don't want to see that model become prevalent in consoles.
Then comes hardware, Apple hasn't shown any urge to provide real gaming hardware at any level. Graphics has always been an afterthought, even the latest and greatest iMacs are far behind what the PC world has. While they may/may not be ahead of current consoles most of those are five years old and are due replacements.
So what does Valve expect? A jacked up Mini with a real graphics controller? What will the interface be? Surely not touch screen, it won't translate well at all to the big screen.
What I do see is probably a misguided attempt to sell TVs with built in Apple TV components and touch screen remotes sized between phone and iPad. But a game console?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
We can see this with the consoles, none of them can play proper PC games. Why do you think Half-Life 2 for the xbox looked far worse? And that is an OLD game.
While for most geeks the difference between a PC and a gaming PC ain't all that big, for the average consumer there is a HUGE difference. Their PC is a P4. People still use non flatscreens for screens!
A reference PC that can play games for half a decade will need to be a cutting edge machine to survive for that long. You can't just use a 200 dollar machine because not only will it already be crap, it will be even crappier by the time it has any adoption at all.
The reference gaming PC has been thought up before and it never works. Either it is to expensive to get adopted or so cheap it ain't any good.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Indeed, it's more news for nerds than the death of Steve Jobs which was reported here.
I doubt there are many popular programs written in a language which was not influenced in any way by C (and be it only by using the syntax). And the same is true for operating systems and Unix.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
"Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people's expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear"
I am not sure what this guy is smoking but I guaranty you that anything Apple releases will not integrate into your existing Wii, Xbox 360, or anything other then products owned by Apple.
The biggest concession Apple has ever made was allowing Ipods/pad/phones to plug into PCs and i suspect that this will continue to be their biggest concession for the foreseeable future.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
So, I can only assume that once Apple does this that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will start suing for patent infringement. Apple will somehow win despite it being obvious they are violating patents. Then after Apple sells a $700 console that for some strange reason millions of people buy despite not being any better than anything else, Apple will sue those three for having violated patents it has that really are the same as patents everyone else has and win.
If Apple is releasing a competitor to consoles then I can't see how he can complain about it being closed.It certainly can't be any more closed than the xbox which you have to go through Microsoft for everything.
You can't surf the net with a browser because you might find a free game to play on your xbox and Microsoft wants to charge you to access free services like Facebook and Twitter. You can't even buy your own hard drive. You have to buy a proprietary xbox 360 hard drive.
If Apple were to release something half way between a console and a PC then it will probably be more open than the existing consoles. If it comes with a browser it's already more open than the 360.
From TFA
"Newell expects Apple to disrupt the living room platform with a new product that will challenge consoles, although he doesn't have any particular knowledge of that new product."
So, "Hey, Apple may do something that may or may not be awesome and stuff." Then he goes off about Apple being a closed platform (XBox, PS3, & Wii aren't?), but doesn't even touch on the points that Apple has no creative partners or real console experience. Apple has no gaming leverage.
I don't see what his point it is, where he's driving at, or if he may actually know something that hasn't been rumored/leaked widestream yet. Let me start a rumor- Valve will soon be working with Apple to make something "that is awesome and stuff."
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
The second gen apple TV is powerful enough for basic games (and this is what is selling bulk, at the moment), has bluetooth, and is super cheap.
I predict a new generation apple TV with iPhone 4-S hardware. Selling for around 100-150 bucks, and enabling people to purchase IOS games from the app store and play them in full high-def in the living room, possibly using i-devices as a controller, or with additional blue-tooth controllers available.
The hardware is good enough, it is cheap, and as been shown so many times as of late, all the hardware in the world doesn't matter a shit because most modern big budget games are crap - they're far too conservative and just follow the same tired old formula, and no one is willing to take a risk. The app store os a breath of fresh air n that respect.
If people could buy games to play on their home cinema for anywhere between free hand typical game RRP, with an average cost under 10 bucks (and ability to play the same content on an iPhone), they will likely sell like hot cakes. Sony and microsoft should be concerned.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
So it seems to me like he has all the reasons to want people locked in his walled garden, not in Microsoft's or Apple's.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
And that challenges games consoles how, exactly? I hate to break it to you, but the average Gears of War player isn't just biding their time until they can get Angry Birds on the big screen. I don't know if Apple devices are capable of competing with the current gen of consoles - bearing in mind they're half a decade old, maybe so, but the bigger step is convincing developers to start producing AAA titles for the devices. Ignoring the lack of a proper gaming controller, the bigger issue here is that either App store customers need to get used to paying £40 for a game instead of 99p or Apple need to convince the likes of EA to start selling their AAA titles for under a quid. That to me seems like a huge hurdle in replacing existing consoles with Apple devices.
Have you ever noticed that people (or companies) who design good looking products that work well and are easy to use are consistently a LOT more lucky than their competitors?
BTW, is "Vision-airy" a clever reference to the Dyson Airblade or the Air Multiplier perhaps? I was just wondering as that's another splendid example of a company that got lucky but also co-incidentally designed products that are beautiful, functional and technically better than the competition and found a solid user base despite being more expensive...
~Pev
It is what I want connected to my TV.
I will not mourn that which I never had to lose. - Unknown
Didn't they try and fail to gain traction in the living room with the Apple TV product? I'm not sure what this guy is smoking, but I don't think there is too much worry about Apple challenging anything right now. Last time Steve Jobs left Apple they floundered until he came back. Now they can't get him back. They make cool products, but I think he gave direction and style to the company. Apple is more like a cult, with people wanting to be as cool as Steve is, rather than an innovative company that can make great gadgets on their own. We will see what they do over the next few years, but if I was a betting man I would short their stock after the iPhone 5 release has finished.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Didn't they recently add the ability to use an ios device as a remote for AppleTV? That would seemingly be the initial play on the console market by setting up the console and having people buy the components before they were even aware they were...
That and charging 400 bucks for a control without a 2 year contract (or however much with a contract) seems like a ridiculously profitable business model.
Sony made a very wrong assumption with the ps3 and how "gamers will pay it"-type attitude. There have been other, even more atrocious failures in the past as well with expensive consoles (Neo-Geo). Now, Apple has shown that the high-price tech niche market exists in other arenas, but history seems to predict that trying the Apple "business-as-usual" style here would be a humbling experience for Apple.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
Apple has Epic in their pocket already. That is not something to dismiss lightly.
Good-bye
Yup Apple got lucky. With the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Air.... Wow. They sure are lucky. Over and over and over again.
They're not challenging consoles. They're becoming consoles. Locked-down hardware, closed internals, gatekeeper needing to sign software, set-top equipment... that's a console. Its not LIKE a console, it IS one.
Keyboard and mouse on a tray table? You are obviously not an FPS player.
And you would be correct in your assumption that first-person shooters happen not to be my favorite genre.
And you try building a decent gaming PC that can do the latest games at 1080p for the price of a PS3.
Can one do the latest PS3 games at 1080p for the price of a PS3? I was under the impression that Xbox 360 games at least were running at 576p to 720p. Is the PS3's RSX GPU really that much stronger than the Xbox 360's Xenos GPU?
You're missing a few things.
None of their most successful products were the first to the market. Being relatively late to market hasn't been a factor in Apple's success, because ultimately their formula tends to revolve around releasing technical products where the goal is releasing them sporting both physical dimensions and UIs that resonate with the majority, non-technical, non-Slashdot crowd with money in the bank. Luck played a part in it, but so did planning, engineering, and multiple trips back to the drawing board. I'm not an Apple fan by most metrics, but I do respect the fact that everyone I know either has an apple product, or wants one. You don't see that kind of pining for...basically anything else that plugs into a wall socket or USB port.
Game consoles might be an established 30 year old industry, but that doesn't mean that they can't bring something new to the table. For one, Apple can do what it's always done - leverage what people already have. Among the greatest selling points of the original iPhone that people forget was that it was essentially the first iPod Touch, which leveraged all the iTunes media people already had. The iPad leveraged all the iTunes media *and* all the apps people already had. If an iConsole can play iOS games, it's got years of purchased apps to work with. Additionally, Apple could make some sort of standardized controller mode, which would not only turn all the presently active iPhones/iPod Touches/iPads into control surfaces, it could breathe new life into the older models sitting in drawers collecting dust. All of that would, in turn, yield plenty of new game sales, which would open the door for more in-depth, $10 multiplayer games that would coexist with Angry Birds and Cut the Rope for use on the grocery line.
Apple sells a platform and an ecosystem, and I wouldn't put it past them to have a device with a screen that doesn't have the capacity to leverage iOS.
who made part of the $3B from programming for Apple. How much as the open source crowd made?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
No, they're just going to push forward on:
http://osxdaily.com/2011/06/19/ipad-2-ios-5-airplay-video-mirroring-become-a-tv-gaming-console/
Tablet (with good processing power) + Airplay (or some other video/audio transport good enough for HD with acceptable latency over a local wifi network).
Which is, connecting the dots you already have, and realizing the console in the living room can become irrelevant or not necessary.
It looks to me that the experience isn't far off from Nintendo's new Wii U controller. But, with the big difference that you'll see thousands of tittles cheap or free on the app market.
yes, that is what I said, they won't be doing anything that someone else hasn't done before them. But I think the people that like gaming on ipads, aren't the type to buy a home console. They are the lowest of the low gamers. They are basicly the people who play solitare on windows. You don't need horsepower for the games they play.
Be seeing you...
You're missing a few things.
None of their most successful products were the first to the market.....
No, they weren't (except the Ipad, really).
But what they gave was useability at a time when other companies weren't really doing that.
I own a 6th generation ipod. Why? Because it's 120gb of music space (don't care taht it plays video), in a small decent case. No one else touches that market much, 'cept like the crappy zune that always sucked.
Ipod's success is luck, because all the other companies gave up on making good mp3 players. No one even bothers to try anymore.
Iphone, well, honestly, most the smart phones before it sucked dog shit. Apple got lucky with a design that people liked, and suddenly, eveyone and their grandma started copying it. And guess what? Apple either doesn't hold the lead anymore, or is close to losing it. Was it strategic insight on their part? Probably not, but then this is the only thing I'd give on the luck part.
Ipads? While techincally they aren't the first on the scene, they are the first with a useable OS on them, unlike the other companies that tried. And yes, Apple holds the lead currently, but the market is new, and the time has been short. As soon as these other companies stop trying to make overpriced tablets to compete with the Ipad and instead make good decent tablets, you'll find the ipad will lose it's place just like the iphones. So yes, they are lucky on the ipads, which won't hold out for long, unless they change how they do stuff, and seeing as they like to overcharge for hardware, and put new hardware out every year, if not less, I don't think they are going to be doing themselves any favors.
Be seeing you...
Yup Apple got lucky. With the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Air.... Wow. They sure are lucky. Over and over and over again.
Considering apple has been in business for 40+ years and only products that they've put out in the last 5 years are considered popular and whatnot, yes, they got lucky.
If I'm wrong, they will continue on this streak, and I'll personally apologize to the world.
So, do we wait another 40 years and see how popular their stuff is, or what? Because it's not like they've been this great since they stupidly stopped making and selling the Apple II.
Be seeing you...
Have you ever noticed that people (or companies) who design good looking products that work well and are easy to use are consistently a LOT more lucky than their competitors?
BTW, is "Vision-airy" a clever reference to the Dyson Airblade or the Air Multiplier perhaps? I was just wondering as that's another splendid example of a company that got lucky but also co-incidentally designed products that are beautiful, functional and technically better than the competition and found a solid user base despite being more expensive...
~Pev
lol, no i didn't do that on purpose, over even know about them, but that is pretty funny. =)
It was just a stupid spelling mistake on my part.
Be seeing you...
I haven't seen any posts about the Xbox arcade or w/e it's called. The 360s and PS3s are not just about AAA titles, there is, afaik, quite a lot of smaller indie games available for both platforms and for PCs. While a lot of Apple's gaming success has come from these micro indie games, they're not the only platform for inexpensive casual games. I think it would be a lot harder than many of the commenters seem to think to claim dominence in the console market, focussed on a niche market that already exists and, from what I can gather, is thriving
Perhaps you're too young to remember how popular the Apple II series and the first Macs were. You've also apparently missed that little iPod thing (introduced 10 years ago) and the iTunes Music Store (almost nine years ago) and the iMac.
Rather than wait forty years I suppose we could just do some simple statistics to figure out how likely it is that Apple's success is due purely to luck. Or just use common sense to come to the conclusion that a fifteen year rise from the verge of bankruptcy to the most valuable company in the world on a string of successes in at least three different markets isn't just luck, no matter what the strange Slashdot anti-fanboy insists.
Valve has an excellent catalogue and distribution mechanism for PC games, but those games are poorly suited for gaming from your couch.
Say a developer does want to make a game suitable for the living room, but the developer isn't a big enough company to qualify under typical console developer guidelines. Would a Humble Couch Bundle be viable?
a pimped up apple tv running ios, locked down
Would it be locked down even further than iOS? It costs $1250 to get started on iOS development. It costs much more to get started developing for any Nintendo product.
Apple will try to dominate all of computer related things but they won't be the best. Unless they buy out some company which they or some are really good at playing.