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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.
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.
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.
There is a reason for that closed distribution service.
The console makers (Sony, MS, etc) doesn't make money on the consoles themselves for a long period of time doing their life-cycle, they get the bulk of the income from software sold on their distributions service and psychical game sales.
If they spend a huge amount of money developing the console hardware, it doesn't make sense to allow third party distribution services on their consoles.
Which is also why they are locked down so tight, unauthorized third party distributions is even worse.
I, however, do appreciate the sentiment from Valve, I'm just afraid it isn't realistic.
The only alternative I see, is if they started to licence third party distribution services, but that kinda defeats the entire "open" point.
Maybe Valve comes up with a cheap way to produce the hardware and also keep it compatible with regular PC games. I'm not just talking architecture, like the Xbox360 (x86), I'm talking direct compatibility with PC Games, with a specific controller scheme attached.
That way, it's pretty much a PC-in-a-box (using a term to make the point, I know a console is already a PC-in-a-box, strictly speaking), where the only requirement to the game is that is has some sort of compatible controller scheme for the console controllers.
And of course, the minimum requirements with whatever hardware is in it.
My post is getting rather lengthy, and I could go on, but I suppose I've included enough to get my point across.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
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
Yes, but the mainstream games channel is as closed as I described. iOS doesn't have any section that is closed in that way.
I hear that it's true for ALL games channels that most games make fuck-all money. Most of those titles in a games shop will not be hits, and if they aren't hits they make a loss. It's the few that are hits that make the money for the industry.
The Xbox/PS3/Wii DRM does not allow the user to close the official launcher and run a game downloaded other than from the official download service.
Thats not what DRM does. DRM attempts to prevent copying content, it is intended to prevent piracy. What you are complaining is a separate topic and has nothing to do with steam either. Of course you can quit steam and run other games, thats not a "Steam" feature, its a "Microsoft Windows" feature (same guys that make the xbox, funny.)
Can I run a game I buy from steam without having Steam running? Can I lend such a game? Can i resell it or give it away after I'm done with it?
And I've read that the DRM on major-label PC disc games that don't use Steam is just as bad as Steam.
Not in the consoles. But good thing you bring up pc discs that "dont use steam" because I got DeusEx 3 for PC and I was forced to tie it up to my Steam Account to play. Now I cant even lend or give away the physical copy. Thanks Steam!!! You have improved my quality of life!
I used to buy certain games in disc form precisely because I was able to share them legally when I was not using them. This is one of the things that is slowly choking the PC gaming market.
Yup Apple got lucky. With the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Air.... Wow. They sure are lucky. Over and over and over again.
Are you twelve? If you were older, I'd expect you to remember the days of Starforce, and of having to look up secret phrases in your manual (written in yellow ink on white pages to defeat photocopying). And of course, there's Ubisoft's DRM that requires a constant internet connection, with Blizzard now planning to do the same in Diablo 3.
Steam has some of the least obtrusive DRM on the planet. Only GOG and the Humble Bundles are really better.
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.