Valve Reveals Gaming Headset, Teases Big Picture

dotarray writes with a bit from Player Attack: "Gaming is big business, says Valve, as the developer takes the time to show off its brand new gaming headset and TV-based Big Picture. Rather than inviting the games media masses who have been clamouring for any details on the Seattle company's 'wearable computing' initiative, Gabe Newell and his team instead went right to the top, with an in-depth interview published in The New York Times." The New York Times article on which this report is based is worth reading, too: Valve's corporate non-structure sounds hard to believe. It seems Valve is also looking for hardware designers.

Comments

Do I have to sign anything to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I figure with Valve and their ridiculous anti-consumer mandatory binding arbitration agreement I might have to give my first born to even read about this invention, yes?

Re:Do I have to sign anything to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit! None of those have that clause.

It's an extreme waiver that companies are only now starting to realize they can get past idiots like you.

Re:Do I have to sign anything to use it?

[jellomizer]

We live in a world where a woman sued and won against spilling hot coffee on herself, because the company didn't put a warning that their hot coffee is hot.
Most slashdotters agree that the current patent system makes it too easy for someone to infringe on a patent and get sued by a patent troll for reinventing something that seemed reasonable to invent at the time.

I hate to sound like a supporter for big business. But even the smaller businesses have the problem they get a customer who is lawsuit happy and will sue for anything. Even if the company win the lawsuit, they loose because there is the legal costs and if the media get word of it, they are automatically assumed that they are the bad guy.
Most companies (yes most of them) really do try hard to give their customers their best effort. Yes they want to make money too. But most companies try to make money selling a product the customers are happy to pay for, and feel they got a fair deal out of it. So they will come back again and give good word of mouth so they can sell more.
But the truth of the matter you cannot make a product or service that pleases everyone. There will be some people who took your marketing then translated it into something that much better in their heads and when they got it, it was a huge let down. Or what is even more common, say in software, or in food service. The System breaks, or you get sick. You will go back and see what was the last thing you did differently, then blame that as the cause.
Where you could have been infected the flu days before you went to the Chinese buffet or your PC just got too dusty and started to overheat causing errors. However there are some people who will sue them for every little thing. These companies are trying to protect their brand image and their bottom line.
What most of use little guys don't understand is how much it costs to run a business, most don't have that much money to wast on lawsuits, or if they have insurance can't afford it going up.