Gabe Newell: Steam Box's Biggest Threat Isn't Consoles, It's Apple

silentbrad sends word of a recent lecture given by Valve's Gabe Newell to a college class. He had some interesting remarks about the future of games in the living room: "The threat right now is that Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway towards entering the living room with their platform," Newell said. "I think that there's a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging — I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily. The question is can we make enough progress in the PC space to establish ourselves there, and also figure out better ways of addressing mobile before Apple takes over the living room? ... We're happy to do it if nobody else will do it, mainly because everybody else will pile on, and people will have a lot of choices, but they'll have those characteristics. They'll say, 'Well, I could buy a console, which assumes I'll re-buy all my content, have a completely different video system, and, oh, I have a completely different group of friends, apparently. Or I can just extend everything I love about the PC and the internet into the living room.' ... I think the biggest challenge is that Apple moves on the living room before the PC industry sort of gets its act together." There's another hour-long lecture from Newell posted on YouTube talking about productivity, economics, and the future of corporations. Speaking of Steam, reader skade88 points out an article at Linux.com about the current state of the Steam for Linux beta.

Comments

How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[John Hasler]

The TV is already there!

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[G3ckoG33k]

Yeah, but the shows on it beats it hands down.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[YodasEvilTwin]

Yes, that was the joke. The TV in and of itself isn't dumbing down anything because it's a passive device.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[WilyCoder]

No, you have referenced a DIFFERENT joke.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[Bogtha]

Have you seen how many buttons a TV remote control has?

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[MacGyver2210]

Adding Apple tech to anything makes it that much dumber. The whole PURPOSE of Apple is to dumb-down the computing experience to where Grandma and Aunt Judy don't have to know anything about computers to use it, aside from "If I click this envelope, I see the email." I have used more complicated vending machines.

Careful, if they get into console hardware they might patent "attaching something to your television" and make a proprietary, $99, single-button remote for it with a custom 128-pin charging cable coded to your specific remote(which also costs $99, and is only available from the Apple store).

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[Anonymous Coward]

So much completely impotent butthurt rage on this site.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remote controls for the multi-button challenged:
http://news.cnet.com/i/bto/20090304/simpleremote_500x375.jpg

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[foniksonik]

Apple already has a console in millions of homes. It's called an AppleTV. It just got a software update to support Bluetooth Keyboards and access to iTunes music purchases. Next up, games and Bluetooth controllers and/or iPhone/iPod/iPad controller app.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you watch whatever you want on the AppleTV, or do you have to buy all the content from an Apple store?

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything you can put into itunes (the software) can be streamed to your apple tv. It need not be purchased through Apple to be displayed on your TV. This means you can buy stuff from other services, rip your own DVDs, record your own home pornos, and more, and watch them all through the magic of a home network.

You can also use services like Netflix & Hulu, as well as access youtube and other streaming services.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[jedidiah]

Yes. And you're the perfect example of it.

A lot of hype surrounds Apple interfaces but quite often then are just crippled. They aren't really easy. You just can't do much of anything.

The simplicity is a mirage.

Gabe here is falling into the usual trap of over-estimating Apple and buying into their whole hype machine.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[jedidiah]

Other devices support more services.

Other applications are also much better at managing your own content. This is why jail breaking Apple devices is so popular. Once you break the DMCA, you can put some decent software on the thing.

Suggesting that you use iTunes as your DVD media manager is just so full of fail.

Apple is far less interesting when it comes to the living room and is eclipsed by a number of players, the least of which is Netflix.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[Anonymous Coward]

You aren't by chance the arrogant prick who goes by the same username ("Jedidiah") on Ars Technica's comment boards, are you? Because when I sent a complaint in about you, I got a very nice reply referring to you as a "well-known but harmless douchebag" from their moderator team. Even if it isn't you, looks like the label applies!

Have a nice day.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct. This is why the traffic Slashdot reports to its own advertising network is down nearly 60 percent compared to five years ago. SIXTY PERCENT!

Don't believe me, send in an ad inquiry. "News for nerds, Opinions that are irrelevant."

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[Anonymous Coward]

"is just so full of fail"
LOL.

Being generous I'll assume you have only used iTunes on Windows or are basing that opinion on hearsay.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[hairyfeet]

I wouldn't call it hype, even those of us who hate Apple for their policies can admit they have a marketing team second to none. Just look at the iPad, tablets certainly weren't new or innovative but it was Apple marketing that made them the "must have" device. Also if you look at Apple's history they have NO choice but to try to get into new markets as any market they are in will become commodity soon enough and their ability to charge a premium dries up, again see the pads and phones and how quickly lower priced Android units have grown.

So we all know Apple has to try to create a new market for them to sell expensive consumer gear in, the only question is where and Gabe may be right that they take a real shot at the living room and try to leverage iTunes to carve out a chunk of the market. Although Gabe frankly also needs to be worried about Windows because like it or not the majority of AAA PC games are DirectX and its gonna be hell getting anybody to port all those games to OpenGL. Lets face it OpenGL has never been less popular for AAA gaming titles, the consensus being that DirectX is easier to use when going for high end graphics and the fact you can't use OpenGL ES on the desktop certainly doesn't help matters so gabe still has to worry about Ballmer crapping all over the desktop and ruining it for everybody. Until he can get the majority of games to be ported like it or not Gabe you are stuck with Ballmer.....man that has GOT to suck.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[rainmouse]

You aren't by chance the arrogant prick who goes by the same username ("Jedidiah") on Ars Technica's comment boards, are you? Because when I sent a complaint in about you, I got a very nice reply referring to you as a "well-known but harmless douchebag" from their moderator team. Even if it isn't you, looks like the label applies!

The Apple is strong in this one...

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[BasilBrush]

It's not hype.

Just because you don't get it doesn't make it hype.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[BasilBrush]

Just look at the iPad, tablets certainly weren't new or innovative but it was Apple marketing that made them the "must have" device.

Ironically Samsung's marketing budget dwarfs Apple's marketing budget. It's about 10 times as much.
http://www.asymco.com/2012/11/29/the-cost-of-selling-galaxies/
And yet Apple is more successful than Samsung.

The truth is Apple is successful because, uniquely in the tech business, they value design above everything.

âoeMost people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. Thatâ(TM)s not what we think design is. Itâ(TM)s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.â
-- Steve Jobs.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[BasilBrush]

As it stands,the Apple TV is quite uninteresting.

However, it's an iOS variant, so all it would take is adding a games controller and giving it access to the iTunes App Store, and it'll become the most interesting console there is. Less powerful than all the others, but an unbeatable range of games from 99c to about $9.99.

That's why Gabe Newell sees it as their biggest threat. And he knows an awful lot more about the business than you do.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[Anonymous Coward]

Adding Apple tech to anything makes it that much dumber. The whole PURPOSE of Apple is to dumb-down the computing experience to where Grandma and Aunt Judy don't have to know anything about computers to use it, aside from "If I click this envelope, I see the email."

simple vs. dumb aside...

Most things in and around your (parent's) house are designed with this simplicity in mind... this is what people WANT. Steam Box will be an utter failure if Valve doesn't strive for the utmost simplicity. They should know this, they already have a foothold on the PC, and if people wanted to play PC games they would already. They want a bigger market, and dragging the current PC experience into the living room is... look, we'd be there already, and we're not.. figure it out. People don't WANT that.

You and everyone who shares your opinion should be cursed with complex, *ahem* - "smart" - but I really mean stupidly complex - cars, lawn mowers, thermostats, TVs, toasters, coffee makers, showers, doorknobs, etc.

People do not WANT their video game experience to include fucking with microphone sensitivity, OS and driver settings, or input devices that were designed a hundred years ago for data entry.

mmm... imagine something like a G13 with analog stick for movement, 20+ discrete buttons, but with an iPhone sized touch display for a fully programmable OSK.
well, 101-Key for you complexity boy, sorry.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[rtb61]

Talk about no idea at all. The big screen sure is changing it is changing from a TV, the idiot box , to a 'Big Screen'. As the price drops and size increases so the big screen changes, don't have a view, with a big screen you do. All so pretty, a beautiful sun rise to help you start the day and a beautiful sunset to help you finish and in between all sorts of mostly 'FREE' content, because if you are using that screen to replace boring windows, pretty much every major room in the house will have one. Apple with it's greed and being driven by duplicitous marketing and inflated profit margins doesn't stand a chance, the big multi-faceted electronics firms can be the only winners in this market.

As this sort of change comes into the market so building design itself will change to accommodate it. Apartments with no windows where the developer supplies hug screens in each major room instead, with better sound control from apartment to apartment and quality air-conditioning. In fact in apartments windows are often a hassle taking up space that a big screen could fill. Of course when you only see the screen and there is no pose value in flashing the box containing it, price becomes the driver and technical quality is what you pay for. Voice control, hmm, if they can get it to really work, could be the only real competitive edge for any company.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[smash]

Yeah I suspect he is. Steve jobs ran over his dog or something it would appear.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[Dog-Cow]

A carrot knows more than Jedidiah does about anything.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[hairyfeet]

And how many Air Jordans are sold each year? it would be hard to argue that Air Jordans are in any way "better" than any other sneaker but its the BRANDING that allows them to sell at a premium. this is pretty much Apple in a nutshell which is why you'll never see Apple try to take the low end markets even though there is good money to be made there, part of their appeal is how expensive they are. Just look at how Porsche tried to put out a low priced model to compete with Camaro and their sales nearly evaporated until they quit selling the low end model, it made the whole brand look cheap.

The little ugly underbelly nobody likes to talk about is a big selling point with the masses is the elitism of Apple and keeping up with the neighbors, i know several who bought iPhones and just use them for dumbphones as it was NOT about the tech, it was about being seen with an iPhone. Let me put it THIS way: You think an app called "I am rich" could have been sold on ANY other platform BUT Apple?

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[BasilBrush]

And how many Air Jordans are sold each year? it would be hard to argue that Air Jordans are in any way "better" than any other sneaker but its the BRANDING that allows them to sell at a premium.

A brand is a promise of quality. Brands can only be maintained over the long term if the customer experience is a good one. If Air Jordans were bad sneakers, they wouldn't have maintained themselves as a desirable brand for 30 years.

Now sneakers aren't my style, so I've never had Air Jordans. But I do buy Camper shoes, even though they are more expensive than the average shoe, because they are comfy, durable and look good. In that order. I can assess any shoe in the shop for how it looks, but the long term comfort and durability is only gaugeable by the brand.

It isn't that a low priced item in a brand diminishes the brand because of the price. It's that a low priced item has to be manufactured cheaply, and that affects it's quality. The evidence for that is that many high priced fashion brands also sell T-Shirts. They are low priced compared to the primary products, but high enough to be well manufactured. And so the low-priced T-Shirts don't hurt the high end product brand.

If you think Apple just chanced upon a desirable brand, and maintain it by fluke, you don't understand how brands work.

It you think they do it by marketing, then you didn't look at my link in the previous post that shows their marketing is a fraction of Samsung's - AND you don't understand how brands work.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[hairyfeet]

Oh I NEVER said it was a fluke, it took Jobs the better part of his lifetime to build that branding up, I'm just pointing out quality is a VERY small part of the equation. As I said i know a lot of folks who bought an iPhone NOT because of the tech or the quality but simply to be seen using an iPhone, it was the elitist nature of the branding that made it appeal to them NOT any kind of measurable quality difference.

I mean why do you think getting burned by the Nvidia Bumpgate didn't hurt the Apple brand like it did HP and the others that also got burnt? Because Apple is the brand of the rich, no different than Lexus or BMW and like those its not the quality of the individual product, although if they put out several stinkers in a row I'm sure it would hurt, but the fact that the price gives the illusion of affluence which is what many are buying into. Like $6 cups of coffee and $400 sneakers its not about the quality as much as you can afford to blow the money, if you can just blow cash like that it makes you "better off" than the guy that can't.

Re:How could you "dumb down" the living room?

[BasilBrush]

As I said i know a lot of folks who bought an iPhone NOT because of the tech or the quality but simply to be seen using an iPhone, it was the elitist nature of the branding that made it appeal to them NOT any kind of measurable quality difference.

Your anecdote is neither here nor there, especially when it doesn't accord with my own experience. And doesn't pass the sniff test.

Not a single person has told you that they'd bought an iPhone to be seen with it, nor because of elitist branding. It's easy to see that because even if it were true, nobody would say it. No one frames their choices in that way when telling another human being. Therefore it is 100% is is from your imagination, It's your own derogatory interpretation of someone else's motivation, when you don't know what their real motivation was.

TL;DR summary: You're ranting. There is no truth in what you are saying.

Apple Pippin 2!

[Kenja]

Actually, its not a horrible idea. Just make it based on iOS and it instantly has a good selection of games.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're apparently oblivious to the fact that games developed to be played on touchscreen devices don't translate well/at all to a console+TV arrangement. I don't think that Apple are actually a danger to the Steam Box. There are many more Android based devices coming out that will be competing in that space.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, its not a horrible idea. Just make it based on iOS and it instantly has a good selection of games.

Where are all these good games people keep talking about in regards to iOS and Android. I look and try and I look and I try and it's all garbage even compared to the most mediocre efforts of XBLA/PSN/.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[Kenja]

Include something like the Leap Motion and you have touch screen.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not looking hard enough. The Chinese companies are bashing out worryingly close duplications of popular PC/console games. There's clones of Starcraft, Warcraft, Halo, BF3, all sorts of driving games based on Forza, GT etc. Sure, there's about 1000 crappy tile games for every AA quality release, but even the best stuff is only a few bucks.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[MightyYar]

I found one of my favorite games ever (R-Type) for a few dollars on Android.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[DigiShaman]

At minimum, Apple needs to push out newer firmware for the Apple TV v3. If you're lookinging for console like hardware form Apple (say Wii performance level), Apple TV v4 could be around the corner. Speaking of, Apple would have Nintendo directly in their crosshairs in the famility console gaming market.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[alen]

that's because the gaming market isn't basement dwellers playing the latest shooter or hack and slash game. it has moved way beyond that now. angry birds and other casual games hook people that would never play "real games" and they make more profits than most "real games"

and yet the nerds who cream their pants over far cry 20 still think they are the center of the world

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[HaZardman27]

and yet the nerds who cream their pants over far cry 20 still think they are the center of the world

I know Valve has been exploring free-to-play games, but so far the only product of that has been Dota 2 which is definitely not a casual game. They are still catering to the "nerds" you speak of.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[HaZardman27]

I agree, for the most part. The best games I've found on mobile devices are for nothing more than killing a few minutes while waiting in a doctor's office or sitting on the bus. I have yet to find a "deep" gameplay experience on mobile that I would find worth pursuing if I have access to other gaming machines (PCs, consoles). Honestly it's the touchscreen-only design of mobile devices that does it, because I occasionally find some games worth playing for 3DS.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[rainmouse]

that's because the gaming market isn't basement dwellers playing the latest shooter or hack and slash game. it has moved way beyond that now. angry birds and other casual games hook people that would never play "real games" and they make more profits than most "real games"

Your right there's no need to make any big 'nerdy' games when there's a fortune to be made from casual angry birds clones. The problem is that developing these mobile casual games is basically a lottery where millions play and only a few very lucky people ever actually the big money.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[Pinky's Brain]

Mobile gaming revenue as a whole is highly dependent on microtransactions for it's revenue, which I think is a trend which will crash and burn ... that might just be hopeful thinking though.

As for moving on, it didn't really. At most mobile competes with PC and handheld casual gaming. The revenues in PC/console gaming aren't going away (at least not any farther away than other luxury items in well established markets) regardless of what the mobile game market does.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[BasilBrush]

The problem is that developing these mobile casual games is basically a lottery where millions play and only a few very lucky people ever actually the big money.

It's a game of skill, not luck.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[BasilBrush]

Obviously there are lots of "deep" gameplay games that work better with joypad and buttons than touch, and benefit from larger screens. And that's exactly where an Apple TV console would come in. Apple already has the casual mobile games market. This move would let them take the more serious game market too.

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[Anonymous Coward]

Team Fortress 2?

Re:Apple Pippin 2!

[HaZardman27]

Ah, I completely forgot that they made TF2 F2P (since it didn't affect me as I had TF2 since it was first released in the Orange Box).

Apple console?

[almitydave]

An Apple gaming device would be an elegant, pure white box with only a light, it would never crash, but only Apple-approved games would run on it, and they'd all be about a brilliant designer surrounded by evil thieving copycats out to make a buck on the back of his genius, causing his kids to starve. Gameplay would consist entirely of quicktime events, "Press X to Sue" which would work fine for their controller which only has one button anyway.

Re:Apple console?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever modded this overrated HAS to work for Apple...

Re:Apple console?

[Anonymous Coward]

An Apple gaming device would be an elegant, pure white box with only a light, it would never crash, but only Apple-approved games would run on it

So basically like every other game console.

Re:Apple console?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. If anything it's a flamebait post.

Re:Apple console?

[mjwalshe]

and it would cost 50-100% more than the xbox and will probably end up as a B&O of devices elegantly designed but expensive and not good at playing with other gear just like B&O realy.

Re:Apple console?

[Nerdfest]

... except for the PC ... and with Windows 8, it's heading that way as well. I'm hoping Valve aren't the only ones noticing this.

Re:Apple console?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment would be funnier if it contained actual humour.

Try harder next time.

Re:Apple console?

[Anonymous Coward]

‘quicktime events’ is under-appreciated, I think

Re:Apple console?

[spacepimp]

Apple failed so hard with the Pippin that you're suggestion couldn't do worse.

Re:Apple console?

[spacepimp]

Apple failed so hard with the Pippin that you're suggestion couldn't do worse.

your suggestion.... gah

Re:Apple console?

[Taibhsear]

An Apple gaming device would be an elegant, pure white box with only a light, it would never crash, but only Apple-approved games would run on it

So basically like every other game console.

Clearly you haven't played a console in a while. And now that I think about it more, probably ever. (bold for emphasis)

Re:Apple console?

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Nah, win8 is an overblown concern. The desktop isn't going away and steam will keep working fine on it.

Re:Apple console?

[Anguirel]

Or used an Apple product.

Re:Apple console?

[Mabhatter]

Not really. The current Apple TV has as much horsepower as an iPhone 4. When they bump that to A5 processor, it will easily be as powerful as xbox360 right now for $99 instead of $199+. 720p isn't much of a stretch versus iPhone 5 resolution right now.

The trick is working in some controller model that doesn't bounce the price too high. Ideally most people will use iPhones or iPod Touch over Bluetooth. They need some basic multi-axis controller that mimics an iPhone for about $20. (Even wii isn't that cheap) and they need it to mimic what existing games do for comntrols seamlessly...

He's totally right that Apple could release iPhone/iPad games on Apple TV tomorrow... Units, software, channel, developers are all in place... Apple just hasn't figured out how to do it GREAT yet.

Re:Apple console?

[mjwalshe]

the 360 is how old? 7 years so next year apple with be at the same place MS was 8 years ago :-) I doubt that an mobile phone arm chip and OS like ISO is going to cut it as a next gen console (aka the 720) though

Re:Apple console?

[jayveekay]

An Apple gaming device would be an elegant, pure white box with only a light, it would never crash, but only Apple-approved games would run on it

So basically like every other game console.

And like the hyptothetical Steambox that will run any game that Valve approves for download via Valve's Steam game service.

Re:Apple console?

[sartalon]

My Apple TV crashes regularly, and I have to unplug the stupid thing because it take forever for the device to figure out on its own that it needs to rest. Its convenient and minimalist, but hardly crashless.

Their godawful logo

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam's biggest hindrance is their godawful logo. That guy, with the water valve stuck in the back of his head? Fuck, that's disgusting. Every time I see it, I cringe. It's revolting. Now, even hearing the word 'steam' in the context of games makes me shudder.

Fire the psychopaths who made that design and come up with something less stomach-churning, like a pile of rotting guts.

Re:Their godawful logo

[Kenja]

That's not their logo...

Re:Their godawful logo

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's just the splash screen they put on all their games..... aaargh!

Re:Their godawful logo

[VGPowerlord]

That's not their logo...

No, it's not the Steam logo. It is, however, the Valve logo.

On a PC, you can to skip Valve's logo. To do so, go to Steam's Library, right-click a Valve game's name and click Properties. From there, add -novid to its startup options and click OK (or Save, I forget which).

Re:Their godawful logo

[Anonymous Coward]

...seriously. Their "biggest" hindrance. The guy-with-a-valve logo.

Yes, because without that short intro video (which can be disabled) that shows up for all of five seconds on very few games, Gabe Newell would easily be a multi-quadrillionare instead of a lowly billionare. He then would most likely own the majority of the Pacific Rim outright (yes, including Japan and Hawaii), built several cities on the moon, and still have enough left over to simply buy out all the internet infrastructure in the US so we can all get the 100PB/sec download speeds we deserve. Just imagine, if only they chose a different logo that gets quickly pushed to the back of our minds shortly after the Team Fortress 2 loading screen appears, they wouldn't just have the vast majority of the PC gaming market, but they'd also be talking with space aliens and angels. Oh, woe is Valve for their poor choice of logo, dooming them to complete obscurity for their sins.

Re:Their godawful logo

[jandrese]

The Steam logo is a stylized closeup of the linkage on a Steam Locomotive...

Re:Their godawful logo

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree! I much preferred their original logo. You know, the one with the guy who's eye was replaced by a valve. It was so much better than the bald guy with a valve on the back of his head that they're using now. I really don't understand why they decided to change it.

Anyways, if you're so squeamish that you can't bear a 5-second splash screen then I would hate to watch any kind of horror movie with you. Heck, you'd probably run screaming from the room if you saw the scene in Terminator where Arnie cuts out his own eye with an X-Acto knife.

Re:Their godawful logo

[HaZardman27]

"Steam" doesn't make games. Valve makes games, and Steam is another product of Valve.

Re:Their godawful logo

[HaZardman27]

Didn't know that, thanks for the tip! I would have just modded you up but I've already posted on this thread.

Re:Their godawful logo

[X0563511]

No, it's not. THIS is the Valve logo.

Re:Their godawful logo

[X0563511]

Steam is a product, Valve is the company.

That said, he's still wrong, because this is Valve's logo.

Re:Their godawful logo

[VGPowerlord]

No, it's not. THIS is the Valve logo.

And yet, that logo never appears in their games, while the logo of the guy with a Valve stuck in his head does. Its the first thing you see after launching a Valve game.

For that matter, there's more than one Valve in head logo; Valve switched to a new one for games released after 2011.

So much BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck. Not even worth elaborating.

I can see it now...

[CCarrot]

The console itself is a featureless white sphere, with random blinky led's hidden under it's mysterious skin, designed to pulse in time with the game music and give no useful information at all.

The controller has just one big button with the trademark apple logo on it...all in-game functions and controls are determined by how fast you press the button, the precise location of the button in relation to your left ear, tilt, yaw and the current weather conditions...but don't worry if this sounds complicated, because Apple will play 99% of the game for you, so really all that grind work is taken care of in the background, according to your projected gaming tastes based on your music collection! You just go ahead and watch the pretty lights and...oohh...shiny...

Re:I can see it now...

[Anonymous Coward]

but don't worry if this sounds complicated, because Apple will play 99% of the game for you

So what's new? 99% of most modern 'games' consists of cut-scenes and the other 1% is running from one cut-scene to the next.

Re:I can see it now...

[X0563511]

These days it's only occasional that I want to play a "game" in your sense of the word. Usually I want an interactive story, instead.

It's not a -bad- thing just because you don't prefer it, you know.

Valve Handheld.

[Anonymous Coward]

I still think a handheld would have been better for them in the long run.

While consoles will certainly work since people are getting more and more pissed off the current consoles, and in general are buying less and less due to awful pricing that still exists for some retarded reason.
Valve are hoping they can one-up all of the others by having considerably cheaper prices that have worked very well on Steam so far.
If it even results in the other big 3 dropping their prices, or other 3rd parties, it will have been a success regardless of their console failing.

But for Apple, a handheld would have been much better to attack them.
In fact, the Android Market as well. It is about to get a boost soon from several different groups. (or so they hope, could well crash, but it might not)
And more to the point, a boost in the gaming side of Android.
Samsung handhelds are selling like hotcakes too.
I guess they could still always release a tablet or phone-like device in the future if the console goes well.
Baby-steps. The console is already a pretty beastly little thing as is.

All we can say for sure is the next few years are going to be a huge change to the gaming industry.
There might even be a company or few that end up leaving it too. Previously large companies at that. (Hell, even Sony might end up being ejected due to losses)
Look at EA, they almost died recently. They crashed so hard. THQ never recovered from uDraw failures, many other sad stories.
Evolution is painful.

Re:Valve Handheld.

[Shikaku]

Can you imagine a working x86 handheld that won't be hot and have no fans?

I can't.

Re:Valve Handheld.

[icebike]

There are some young adults that have their gaming console smacked right in the living room, but by and large this isn't a very useful arrangement unless there are only two people in the household, both of whom are couch potatoes. Monopolizing the big screen probably isn't the best way for games.

Most of these consoles end up in the spare bedroom, so that kids can watch DVDs and TV, and the adults can watch the football game, or actually have friends over to see something besides empty pizza boxes and smashed beer cans.

Handhelds have a power problem. Almost any game is a battery sucking nightmare. And the device itself is easy to drop, sit on, or throw against the wall after a crushing defeat.

I still think there will be a console, if nothing else, just to serve up the game and do the heavy lifting, but perhaps your HUD will move onto the handheld, so that multiple players aren't seeing exactly what you have in the ammo box.

None of the current handhelds are suitable if you ask me. Touch screens just don't cut it. What is needed is a tablet sized device with 4 buttons on the back on both sides located where you fingers naturally fall, maybe one on the front on each side, and a touch screen that really isn't involved in gameplay.

But seriously, I don't see very many people handing over their gaming to Apple's nanny mentality.

Re:Valve Handheld.

[aztracker1]

I think a bluetooth game pad with a built in holder for a 4-7" phone/tablet would be nice... and games designed to work with it.

Re:Valve Handheld.

[arth1]

There are several smartphones with x86 CPUs in them.

Re:Valve Handheld.

[codepigeon]

There are some young adults that have their gaming console smacked right in the living room, but by and large this isn't a very useful arrangement...are couch potatoes(sic)...and the adults can watch the football game, or actually have friends over to see something besides empty pizza boxes and smashed beer cans

What decade are you living in? Or is your interpretation of 'young adults' anyone under 50?

Re:Valve Handheld.

[dissy]

I think a bluetooth game pad with a built in holder for a 4-7" phone/tablet would be nice...

You describe http://www.icontrolpad.com/

It can be turned on in joypad mode, keyboard mode, iCade mode, or a few others.
There are detachable side pieces made to fit certain models of smart phone, as well as a generic back bar piece to hopefully fit others, as well as smaller side pieces to snap on and use as a stand alone controller with nothing else attached to it (IE for PC use)

Re:Valve Handheld.

[CMontgomery]

The WiiU actually does this. You can play games on the 'iPad'-esque controller while some TV show (or whatever) plays on the TV.

But the WiiU is not scoring well with the 'core' gaming market. I am one of those young adults in a single apartment with a PS3, Xbox 360, and PS2 hooked up to my tv. I also have an old Xbox running XBMC in my bedroom. And there's a few reasons why the steambox/wiiU/appleplayer aren't appealing to me and quite a few of the other 'core' gamers I talk to.

The steambox (from the specs semi-released) are:
Between 4 and 8 gigabytes of DDR3 RAM
A quad-core 64-bit, x86-based 32nm processor running at up to 3.2GHz (with 4MB of Level2 Cache)
An integrated graphics card containing up to 384 programmable cores

That's just a computer. And a $999 one at that. There is a cheaper $499 option, but anyone who is interested in knowing the specs that they need to play (ie, tier 1 steambox vs tier 2) will just build a computer and hook it up to their tv with Steam's new 'Big Picture Mode.' There's no reason to buy a steambox; if you use Steam, you already have a computer.

The WiiU has the same problems as the Wii1. I know the Wii was the best selling console of the three big ones, but it didn't appeal to the 'core' segment for the simple reason that it had no good games. Sure it had a Zelda or two and a few Mario's, and a lot of people bought a Wii for those games. But that's it. After you play those games the Wii collects dust. Now that's not a problem for Nintendo because they didn't really sell the console at a loss (like most companies do). But if anyone else tried that it would be a bad idea.
But the WiiU does have your handheld idea. Which is actually really cool. But this comes at the cost of battery power (like you said), since even the tablet/controller can only last 4 hours without a charge. It also comes at a cost to graphics, since streaming content in real time to a tablet is rough. Most games already lag at 100 ms (fast action games are ~60 ms), and adding much more will kill the game, so they scale down the pixels. So for the 'core' market that buys all the $60 AAA titles, they want more, and the Wii can't deliver. When a game came out on all three systems (360, ps3, Wii), the Wii was by far the worst one. It had less power, worse controls, and a terrible online system. Obviously I cannot speak for the future of the WiiU, but I imagine something similar when the new Xbox and Playstations come around.

Now as for the biggest threat being Apple? I've never heard this before and it seems quite silly. But this really sticks out:

'Well, I could buy a console, which assumes I'll re-buy all my content, have a completely different video system, and, oh, I have a completely different group of friends, apparently. Or I can just extend everything I love about the PC and the internet into the living room.'

The people who will buy games and consoles don't think this. Or if they do it's as easy as plugging in a cord to your tv, with the added benefit of not having an iOS system. Which I assume would be heavily locked down similar to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod. If Apple enters the market they will have all the people who play the $1 games. The so-called 'casual' players. And if that's what Gabe is after, more power to him. But he is the creator of Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress 2, and the most popular game delivery system on the PC (and linux!). The future of gaming does of course involve both types of players, and the 'casual' market is probably bigger than the 'core' market. But the 'casual' players don't buy $500+ machines made for the sole purpose of playing games.

Apple might overtake Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo in terms of dollars if they want to, but that doesn't at all mean any lost Xbox, Playstation (or Wii!) sales. So I don't think the future of gaming is in any risk.

Re:Valve Handheld.

[CMontgomery]

And sorry for the double post.

But those 'kids' who play games are quickly turning into adults. And doing rather important things. Or atleast in my case engineering at a medium sized company making polymers...somewhat important things atleast.

Re:Valve Handheld.

[Pinky's Brain]

The Xi3 computers are endorsed by Valve, but they are not the "official" Steambox ... that will only come in 2014.

Re:Valve Handheld.

[CMontgomery]

Ah, I hope that is true and the final Steambox is just one product.
So is the Xi3 just valve saying, 'This is the direction we want to go in'?

With the next gen sony and microsoft consoles coming out (most likely) this holiday season, do you think the steambox will come out a fair amount afterwards?

Valve's take on Smart TV

[richtopia]

When Gabe is saying that Apple is the primary competitor, it looks to me more that Steam wants to compete in the smart TV segment more than Apple is bringing a console to market. There are a lot of smart TV devices attempting for market domination, but I just do not see any achieving TiVo status, none seem to bring anything revolutionary to the table. With this mindset, I now expect XBMC to be in Steam's Greenlight and available for Linux shortly. Make it happen.

Overrated "Apple TV"

[js3]

Why is everyone so hyped about about apple tv? Even gabe is scared of it but apple has done nothing new with its set top box. It's about as useful as my crappy dvd player (which can play netflix and has its own apps).

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[Anubis IV]

They're not worried about the current iteration of the Apple TV. They're worried about what it foreshadows. The rumors indicate that Apple has been working backroom deals in order to get content providers lined up for something new that's coming later.

For my part, I like Apple, but I don't want them anywhere near my gaming. iOS games work for a quick fix, but Apple has shown over and over again that they do not "get" gaming at all.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[Anonymous Coward]

but apple has done nothing new

That's every product they put out.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[Pieroxy]

They're not worried about the current iteration of the Apple TV. They're worried about what it foreshadows. The rumors indicate that Apple has been working backroom deals in order to get content providers lined up for something new that's coming later.

For my part, I like Apple, but I don't want them anywhere near my gaming. iOS games work for a quick fix, but Apple has shown over and over again that they do not "get" gaming at all.

Do you mean to say Apple only got gaming for 97% of the population? I think that's pretty much all they want, they couldn't care less about the rest.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[TheNinjaroach]

my crappy dvd player (which can play netflix and has its own apps)

That doesn't sound very crappy to me..

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[Anubis IV]

No, this has nothing to do with hardcore vs. casual gaming (that's a tangential topic). What I'm saying is that Apple simply doesn't get gaming, period, nor do I even think that the picture you've painted is factual (e.g. the majority of households in the U.S. have a current-gen console, suggesting that tablets and smartphones haven't proven to be enough to fulfill their gaming needs). Moreover, your statement is predicated on the assumption that because a company has made a platform on which successful games can be made, that they themselves must also get gaming (i.e. "PCs have lots of great games, and HP makes PCs, so HP must get gaming"). While that may be the case, I do not believe that is by any means a safe assumption.

To date, Apple's success in this area has been largely accidental. They've made repeated statements to the effect that they were caught entirely by surprise at the fact that gaming took off in the way it did on the platform they built. But just because some developers have been able to make good games on Apple's platform does not mean that Apple itself really groks gaming. Their last dedicated gaming product was the ill-fated Pippin, and while the company has come a LONG way since then, reports over the years have indicated that their efforts to improve gaming on their platforms have been halfhearted and misguided.

For instance, I recall a story that Gabe Newell used to tell (but can't find a link for it, unfortunately) about how Apple would contact Valve periodically after Half-Life came out, asking them what they could do to make the Mac a more appealing platform for Valve's games. An earnest Apple rep would come out to Valve HQ, sit down for a few hours, take down copious notes over issues with the hardware and software that were keeping Valve off the Mac, would go back to Apple, and then would never be heard from again. The next year Valve would get the same call and a fresh, earnest Apple rep would come out and repeat the process.

As another example, consider Apple's primary product that's dedicated to gaming right now: Game Center in iOS. The feature has been baked into iOS for a few years at this point, yet it rarely gets used by games, other than for achievements, simply because it isn't that useful of a tool to most gamers or game developers. In fact, the first popular game that actually used it (Letterpress) was able to bring Game Center to its knees in just a few days, despite only using it for player matching and notifying players it was their turn.

Don't get me wrong, I love both my iPhone and iPad (and my Macs, yes, plural), and my collection of iOS games is over a hundred strong, but that doesn't change the fact that I believe it's the developers who get gaming, not Apple, and that any attempts on Apple's part to usurp the role of dedicated gaming consoles would be a setback to gaming, in that we would see the will of a company that doesn't get gaming being imposed on the community as a whole. I'm fine with them being a player in the market, but the idea that Apple can "[roll] the console guys really easily" is one I do not find appealing whatsoever.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[mckenzie.carl]

Apple don't need to get gaming to cause some serious pain for the consoles - all they need to do is release a good media box that is also capable of playing IOS games in 1080P. Of course, they will probably shoot themselves in the foot by not allowing Netflix & Hulu on the Apple TV.
I recall reading an article about Xbox usage that found overall, Xbox 360 consoles are used more for watching videos than for gaming - that is a very good reason for a games console that can play videos to be worried about a media box that can play games.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[Anubis IV]

Apple don't need to get gaming to cause some serious pain for the consoles

I completely agree, which is exactly why I'm concerned.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[Clsid]

The AppleTV has become like a social device for me. When I have people around, that's the way we see photo albums, youtube videos and the ocassional TV show/movie. Aside from that, it's pretty neat to use airplay for music plus an iphone to control the whole setup.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[del_diablo]

For all its worth, lets talk about the Pippin. The Pippin was a deal between Bandai and Apple for a home console. Bandai is a quite large toy and licensed toys manufacturer, who usually had a hand with most of the formulaic merchandise aimed at children. To quote wikipedia:

Since the 1980s, Bandai has become the leading toy company of Japan, and to this day, has the main toy licenses in Japan to popular properties including Daikaiju, Ultraman, Super Robot, Kamen Rider, the Super Sentai and Power Rangers series (which they took part in creating), Gundam and many others.

So basically Pippin was by default setup for succes in Japan, as it was them who even markeded the console. In the end neither Apple nor Bandai understood consoles, and it failed horribly.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[drinkypoo]

They're not worried about the current iteration of the Apple TV. They're worried about what it foreshadows.

This ain't the first ATV. None of them have been game-changers. I'm not feeling threatened.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[Narcogen]

The analogy between PCs and Windows gaming with respect to Apple and iOS gaming misses the single most important aspect of the latter relationship: Apple is the platform holder for iOS. HP is not the platform holder for Windows; they are a manufacturer of commoditized devices that run that platform.

While it is true that the generic nature of the iTunes store means that developers can be successful on the iOS platform without Apple necessarily "getting" gaming, I think it is not difficult to draw a clear distinction between that and HP's situation, where anything HP does or does not "get" about gaming is entirely irrelevant to how well games do on Windows, whether on HP hardware or not.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[Narcogen]

Should you feel threatened? Do you design consoles or program console titles? If not, what exactly about the potential success of the ATV, for gaming or any other living room purpose, is supposed to threaten you?

That said, I do seem to remember a few years back when some executives at Motorola, Nokia and RIM mentioned that they didn't feel at all threatened by the idea of Apple making a phone, because it was unheard of for a company to walk into a new market and make a big impact right away, and it was obvious that big, established companies with a long history of designing telecommunications devices were going to have a big advantage in that segment for a long time to come.

Maybe people should in general have a slightly lower threshold for feeling threatened. Perhaps not as low as Newell's, but then again, this is a game he has a clear stake in.

What I find most interesting is that the threat is described mostly as an ideological one; that if Apple somehow succeeds in competing against the console makers, this is somehow bad in itself as well as bad for Steam and Valve. Does Newell just think the console makers are weaker competition, and he'd rather have them to deal with than Apple?

I'm also still at a loss to describe what this Apple and Steam-fueled overthrow of console gaming is supposed to look like. Keyboards and mice are not taking over from controllers in the living room anytime soon, for reasons that should be obvious. Maybe something new will, but if so, we haven't really seen it yet. PC games on Steam can be, and are, played with controllers, but there's a good deal of overlap between the AAA titles available for each platform, and I'd be willing to bet a good portion of the long tail that's available on Steam but not on a major console contains the higher proportion of games that aren't made for controllers and are intended for keyboard and mouse.

If backporting decent controller schemes onto Windows games was that trivial, something tells me MS would have made more sincere efforts to bring more Windows games to the Xbox; or perhaps they were just insistent on trying to make their console the primary development target-- which for a fair number of developers they did, whether 1st party or not.

I have Steam on my Mac, an Xbox 360, and a few iOS devices around. I'm not sure where the Steam box is really supposed to add value to the ecosystem. I can't think of a controller-optimized title I could play on a Steam box that I couldn't already get on a console, or a non-controller-optimized title I could play on Steam but would prefer to on a Steam box rather than a Mac or PC. Where there are overlaps, I don't see where the Steam box has an advantage over the other platforms. Where there is no overlap-- people who right now only have access to one platform-- I don't see why Steam would be the primary pick.

I suppose it's not impossible that the Steam box (Steamboxen?) might grow the Steam market, but right now it looks to me like it's a living room machine designed for people who are already on Steam and think consoles are for idiots. Those people are already on Steam, though. If Steam boxes are subsidized, Valve just ends up costing themselves money to retain their own clients, and if it isn't, I'm not sure how it competes with consoles on price and specifications. Why are people who own PlayStation 3s and Xbox 360s now supposed to buy a Steam box for their next living room gaming hardware instead of the next iterations of either of those platforms? If Valve is trying to grow the market, why would people who have so far avoided consoles buy a Steam box at all?

I can easily get why Valve wants to do these things; it just isn't clear to me how, right now.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[drinkypoo]

Should you feel threatened? Do you design consoles or program console titles? If not, what exactly about the potential success of the ATV, for gaming or any other living room purpose, is supposed to threaten you?

Apple extending their dominance and fueling the iFanboi fire, of course.

Apple has tried time and again to conquer the television and failed hard.

Why are people who own PlayStation 3s and Xbox 360s now supposed to buy a Steam box for their next living room gaming hardware instead of the next iterations of either of those platforms?

Because Sony and Microsoft are both pure evil, and Valve is only mostly evil.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[Anubis IV]

I don't disagree with any of what you've pointed out. That said, I think it kinda misses the point, in that you've latched onto a one-off example that wasn't material to the arguments I was making. I could've just as easily swapped it out for one of the dozens of examples of phone, technology, and other companies trying to enter the game market without success. In fact, I could've dropped it entirely without affecting what was said.

That said, it was a careless example on my part, so I do want to say thank you. Even if it is a minor point, I should take greater care in my words, so I appreciate anyone pointing out problems in what I said.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

+1
They were able to pull off iTunes by getting the content. They have the advantage when dealing with the content makers. You can't dump cable for Netflix and Hulu because you'll miss out on X, Y, and Z. Maybe they can be the ones that tackle that. That is probably a big part of what drives that fear.

Re:Overrated "Apple TV"

[Anonymous Coward]

Made at the peak of Apple's time flailing around aimlessly. If they have another go at it we'll see what they're really capable of post-Jobs.

Look at the target market ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever I hear mention of Valve or Steam, it tends to be from the hardcore gamer. They obviously use Windows because that's what Valve targets. Even if they didn't care for Valve, they would still use Windows because that's where they find the games that they want to play. Now ask those people: would you rather have console based upon Linux or an Apple console. I can almost assure you that they would prefer Linux. The thing is, both platforms have a reputation. Apple's has a reputation for closed platforms, which would make them another Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony. On top of that, Apple has a reputation for producing mid-range products for a premium price. That isn't exactly what a PC gamer wants. Heck, it isn't even what a console gamer wants. Linux has the opposite reputation. Even if the Steam box was fairly closed, someone would figure out how to modify the hardware and software. That's more in line with what a PC gamer does.

Re:Look at the target market ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Premium products for a mid-range price, but otherwise you're fine.

Re:Look at the target market ...

[Servaas]

Premium products for a mid-range price, but otherwise you're fine.

lol so wrong

Gabe, are you reading?

[robmv]

Gabe, are you reading? I consider your experiments when you let my family and friends play the games I hypothetical could buy from your platform with their own users on my PC/Steam Box/whatever you will try to sell. Until my games aren't tied to only my account for play, you are out of my living room.

Re:Gabe, are you reading?

[Captain Splendid]

Gabe, are you reading? I consider your experiments when you let my family and friends play the games I hypothetical could buy from your platform with their own users on my PC/Steam Box/whatever you will try to sell. Until my games aren't tied to only my account for play, you are out of my living room.

This is quite possibly the dumbest argument against Steam I've ever heard.

Referring to the part I bolded, what would be a suitable alternative then?

Re:Gabe, are you reading?

[robmv]

Simple, any platform that allow other people to play on my console with their own users, with their own friend list, scores, etc. It is not something amazing, it is already done that way on the PS3 and XBox (barring those stupid online passes needed by some games). With Steam if your brother, husband or wife, child want o play the games you bought that you have with you user on your PC/Mac, they need to access steam with your user id, or uy the game again

Re:Gabe, are you reading?

[VortexCortex]

Until my games aren't tied to only my account for play, you are out of my living room.
This is quite possibly the dumbest argument against Steam I've ever heard.
Referring to the part I bolded, what would be a suitable alternative then?

Well, I'm a part-time game developer, with a small team. Here's our alternative approach: A product serial is good for 3 different users online at once -- let your friends or guests play with you while you're online, and maybe they'll buy their own full account too. Offline single play isn't tied to the online account, (Piracy isn't a problem, it's free advertizing for the multi-player mode, essentially). The product is tied to the serial number and purchaser's email address, and there's a simple form to re-assign the product code to a new email address (for giving it away / selling it), upon which I re-generate the product code for the new user, and the old ones stop working. I got that feature for free when I implemented "change your account email address", which is a feature every service should have.

Protip: create a new Steam account each single time you buy a game. Then you can simply buy/sell/trade the account that the game is tied to. Sucks if you have a ton of games, but that's also an alternative too: Have lots of accounts.

Digital stuff does sort of need to be tied to an account so long as we're leveraging artificial scarcity of bits to make our money -- bits are in infiinite supply, their cost should be zero (so says Economics 101), hence "piracy" exists. Thus, IMO, the current publishing model of the industry is untennable... However, There is an alternative to this model too, even has a car analogy: When you want your car fixed you get an estimate from a mechanic, agree on the price, the work is done, and there's no re-occurring fee if multiple people benefit from the work that the mechanic did once... When you want a car designed, you could do the same process.

Imagine using a crowd funding service like KickStarter, IndieGoGo, etc, where developers can actually ask for how much money they need to make the game and a little for profit too. It's just like working under a publisher. Same work, same money, and just like working for the Pubilsher you start working on something else to put food on the table once that game is done -- Gotta keep working to eat. That is to say, Everyone gets the game for free (since the funders already payed for it to be created). In a today's publisher model the Publisher would try to enforce artificial scarcity of bits to recoup their losses, and maybe turn a much bigger profit, however, with a crowd funded system there don't have to be any artificial scarcity at all. My ability to configure the bits is what's scarce, that's what I want to sell -- My labor. I just want to get paid to do work, not sell copies. Bonus: If I pitch a shitty idea no one funds it, and I don't have to waste my time making a game no one wants to play; Conversely, I'll get free market research and the games that do get funded are ones folks actually want to play. The bigger bonus: No More Piracy. You can't download what isn't created yet.

Sure beats making a game and hoping it doesn't tank or else you lose your job, or, even worse under some publishers / studios: You finish the game and are laid off immediately whether it's good or not because they can re-hire desperate people easily without even needing to give them a raise for their past efforts.

Re:Gabe, are you reading?

[CronoCloud]

This is quite possibly the dumbest argument against Steam I've ever heard.

Referring to the part I bolded, what would be a suitable alternative then?

PS3's and 360's work more like multi-user 'nix systems. There's a master account (root) and sub accounts. If I buy a game on my PS3, then all users can play it, and they have their own saves and trophies. MMO accounts work on an account level. If I"m lifetime in FreeRealms, anybody else play Freerealms on the machine would have their own account and purchases tied to it.

And since purchases are tied to accounts, you can redownload them if you upgrade/replace your PS3 hard drive, or get a new PS3, or even a second PS3...you can have up to 5 authorized devices. You can buy a copy of say LBP on one PS3 and download it to a second one too. And for PSone Classics/Mini's and PSP games, that also applies to multiple platforms. Buy Angry Birds or Final Fantasy VII once, have it on your PS3 AND PSP.
--

Gripe about steam (kinda OT): ratings

[kwerle]

Know what I hate about steam? I know you wanna know!

No ratings.

At least Apple lets me rate apps! Steam doesn't even let you do that. I know they feel they can't afford it, because then folks will stop buying the 99% crap games. But unless they get their act together, I'd be happy for iOS to kick steam's ass.

And if steam wanted to do it right, they'd use something like the netflix rating system - where folks that like the same kinds of games I like will inform predicted scores for other games.

I mean -- how hard is that? Netflix has these competitions for ratings prediction, and the top few are always within a few percent of each other. Pick up the scraps and implement it!

Re:Gripe about steam (kinda OT): ratings

[Zironic]

Doesn't Steam hook into Metacritic? Just rate all the games over there.

Re:Gripe about steam (kinda OT): ratings

[Fallingcow]

They display the Metacritic score for most games on the game pages and some of the list views (and almost all of the ones that don't have a metascore suck).

So they do have ratings, they just outsource it.

Re:Gripe about steam (kinda OT): ratings

[VGPowerlord]

Yes, they don't let users rate apps (although you can write recommendations).

However, most of the games in Steam's store DO have their Metacritic ratings posted. And last time I checked, Metacritic does have a user ratings system. Whether or not that's used in the actual Metacritic score, I don't know though.

Re:Gripe about steam (kinda OT): ratings

[jandrese]

And frankly, the ratings in Apple's App Store aren't really all that useful either.

Re:Gripe about steam (kinda OT): ratings

[Anonymous Coward]

You can put whatever text you want into the body, but even if you express a negative opinion it's still a 'Recommendation', as in "Anonymous Coward and two more of your friends recommend this game".

Re:Gripe about steam (kinda OT): ratings

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't Steam hook into Metacritic? Just rate all the games over there.

Metacritic has a whole LIBOR scandal thing going on. You KNOW not to trust video game reviews right, that's why metacritic EXISTS, so when all five reviews issue about the same score, isn't that a sign something is going on?

Look at Natural Selection 2. One review out of line with a deservedly (IMHO) less than stellar review and the "community" roars and demands a redo, which falls in line of course. Metacritic's policy is to only use the first score, good for them, but the notion that one out of line review is invalid is INSANE. They ought to work out a bigger pool of reviewers, like what Rotten Tomatoes, even if that means picking from people unaffiliated with video game related publications.

I laughed out loud when I read praise like "combination of Counter Strike and DotA". You can't talk bad about elitist game design because elitist gamers fuss too much. Like a bunch of nerds shouting down every bad Transformers review on Rotten Tomatoes till they see a score they like.

Re:Gripe about steam (kinda OT): ratings

[kwerle]

Rating games on metacritic doesn't seem to do what I want. There are plenty of great first person shooters that I would never wanna buy. Not because they're bad, per se, but because I don't generally like those kinds of games.

I want scores that reflect my tastes.

Re:Gripe about steam (kinda OT): ratings

[Pieroxy]

And frankly, the ratings in Apple's App Store aren't really all that useful either.

Huh? When I see an app with a crappy icon, 20 votes and 1/5 rating, I pretty much know it's a pile of shit. Ratings are not perfect, but saying that they are not useful is a bit of a stretch IMO.

Re:Gripe about steam (kinda OT): ratings

[jandrese]

They're seriously gamed. Really low ratings can be a good indication of a crap app, but high ratings are basically meaningless.

No, console's advantage is the standardized HW

[Anonymous Coward]

The advantage of the console, is the standardized, moderately priced, moderately powerful hardware, that devs can optimize for, and reduce debugging against. The DRM is a bonus. Gabe doesn't seem to realize the importance of standardized hardware. Look at the difficulties of releasing something for Android.

integrated ratings vs. metacritic

[kwerle]

Several posts recommending metacritic. Which is sucky for the PC and a loser for the living room. If steam wants to be in the living room, they should have a UI that is just as good (at least) for picking new games as netflix has for picking shows to watch. Integrated.

Still - I appreciate the metacritic pointers and will dig into that.

Re:integrated ratings vs. metacritic

[spacepimp]

Netflix gives you a suggested rating based on the ratings you have given to other movies. You cannot actually view a movies over all ranking, just what Netflix thinks it should be for you. Steam lets you see the top selling games from the genres of your choosing and then lets you dig into actual metacritic reviews, to read gamer reviews and critic reviews. This happens with the native steam browser. My fear in user generated Steam scores would be subject to 1 star reviews because their 250 dollar trojan infested laptop with intel onboard shared GPU gives them bad frame rates in FarCry.

Re:integrated ratings vs. metacritic

[kwerle]

On the flip side: I really like some simplistic strategy games that are well done. I really don't care for 99% of first person shooters. So I would very much like to see ratings reflect the kinds of choices I've made in the past. Metacritic doesn't seem to do that for me.

Netflix DOES let you see what other folks said about a movie. Not that I care. What I DO want from netflix that I do not have is the rotten tomato score.

Which is exactly what I want from steam: metacritic score for games (which is like RT) AND a personalized best guess score based on how I have scored games in the past.

There's no consumer-based reason not to have both (and the ability to hide one/both). The only reasons I can think of is lack of developer time and/or desire to sell really crappy games.

Re:integrated ratings vs. metacritic

[heathen_01]

You already rate steam games implicitly by the time you spend playing them.

Re:integrated ratings vs. metacritic

[Anguirel]

Not entirely accurate. I may really enjoy, say, Portal... but I don't spend hours playing it now. It was a nice self-contained experience. Total hours would need to be rated against expected hours in some fashion, but it still doesn't entirely make for a good rating system -- there are people that will play through a bad game just to see the end (or whatever) -- just like some people will finish a bad movie. Just because they watched it to the end, that doesn't mean it was their favorite movie ever. Even if they were a reasonable approximation of rating, Valve currently doesn't harvest that "implicit" rating for consumer use in a NetFlix-style "based on your past behaviors, you might want to try X, Y, and Z" way. They may or may not be using that data for other purposes.

Re:hey

[cod3r_]

I liked the second better than the first, but seems like all the rave is about the 3rd.

I Still Don't Get The Appeal of DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried to appreciate Steam as something that adds something that I might want to a hobby that I enjoy, which is playing computer games, but I just can't find anything that I like about it. When I buy a game, I want to buy a disc that I can use to install the game on a PC whether or not I've got an Internet connection going to it. I want to own that disc. I don't want to have to install a DRM client in conjunction with the game, and I certainly don't want that client to be buggy and crash my machine repeatedly (maybe the newer versions of the Steam client are better now, but they certainly weren't during the time that I was wrestling with them). I want to be able to play that game long after Valve software is gone. Steam is nothing more than DRM to me, and I'd like it if it would just go away.

Wii

[MichaelSmith]

I would watch streamed movies on my wii, if it had the capability to do that. I read that you can get netflix on the wii in the US. Is that correct? You can't do that here in Australia as far as I know.

Re:Wii

[mjr167]

The Wii has had streaming capabilities for years. Go into the wii store and download the netflix app. I can't see how your geographic location hinders that ability.

Re:Wii

[MichaelSmith]

No netflix here in Australia.

Re:Wii

[CronoCloud]

Sucks to be you! Australia should have gone NTSC/ATSC then you'd get lumped with the US like Canada is and get most of the good stuff.

But no, an English speaking PAL country in the middle of a huge ocean with a tiny population no where near the BIG native english speaking PAL market with a rating system that was Insane....well you're going to get ignored and price gouged when it comes to content.

Re:Wii

[MichaelSmith]

I don't think PAL/NTSC is the issue here. Its more licensing for the content. Movie delivery channels are locked down and it may not be worth the effort of netflix to negotiate their way in. Therefore a lot of us torrent and watch free stuff on youtube.

Too price-sensitive

[Animats]

The TV market is too price-conscious for Apple. They can enter that market, but it will drag down their margins.

Re:Too price-sensitive

[SeaFox]

The TV market is too price-conscious for Apple. They can enter that market, but it will drag down their margins.

You mean like the razor-thin profit margin PC industry?

Re:Too price-sensitive

[ColdWetDog]

Apple has a larger market cap than most of Hollywood combined (10 times that of Universal Studios alone). That sort of clout can be a game changer. The fact that it hasn't yet come to fruition means that the studios and allies still have quite a bit of control over the system but Resistance Is Futile! If Apple really wanted to swallow them up it could.

  The problem isn't hardware or software - that's easy. The Apple TV box is cheap, there isn't a need to make an 'Apple TV' ala the iMac. Apple needs to have control over the catalog - something nobody really has. But with St. Jobs gone, I'm not sure anyone has the ego strength to drag through that fight.

Re:Too price-sensitive

[drinkypoo]

The TV market is too price-conscious for Apple. They can enter that market, but it will drag down their margins.

You mean like the razor-thin profit margin PC industry?

The industry in which Apple has never managed to top 11% even when they have had technological superiority? Oh, OK.

Re:Too price-sensitive

[SeaFox]

The TV market is too price-conscious for Apple. They can enter that market, but it will drag down their margins.

You mean like the razor-thin profit margin PC industry?

The industry in which Apple has never managed to top 11% even when they have had technological superiority? Oh, OK.

Uh, my point is Apple is already in a market known for having very thin profits and functioning in it as a premium brand, making money hand-over-fist with their margins on the machines they do sell verses the rest of the industry. The actual market share percentage has nothing to do with this -- we don't have to "make it up on volume" when you're making a killing already.

Thanks for not paying attention to the original topic though.

Classic Confusion

[SuperKendall]

Adding Apple tech to anything makes it that much dumber.

Simpler is not dumber.

Usually to simplify you in fact have to make something more complex - but it's complexity the user does not see.

Re:Classic Confusion

[scot4875]

Usually to simplify you in fact have to make something more complex - but it's complexity the user does not see.

And you just keep telling yourself that that is, in fact, what Apple does. Like the "simplified" trackpads that Apple innovated and everybody else has adopted that are beautiful because they have no buttons but suck really, really badly for drag-drop or select-single-pixel operations. I pretty much *have* to carry around a USB mouse to get any real work done on my MacBook Pro.

--Jeremy

Re:Classic Confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't use an external keyboard with my MacBook Pro because the built-in trackpad is so damn brilliant. The multi-touch gestures make my work so much quicker and easier. You'd have to be a masochist to make do with two buttons and a scroll wheel.
Of course a mouse or graphics tablet would better suit the work some people do, but for me; programming and general use, I'd go for the Apple's trackpad every time. (By comparison, the one on the work-supplied Lenovo is crap.)

Re:Classic Confusion

[SuperKendall]

Like the "simplified" trackpads that Apple innovated and everybody else has adopted that are beautiful because they have no buttons but suck really, really badly for drag-drop or select-single-pixel operations

I prefer the Apple trackpad so much that I use an external Apple trackpad when I have my laptop hooked up to an external monitor on a desk...

After long-term use I really do not think that the trackpads are bad at all for single-pixel level pointing, I have no trouble hitting anything with precision. I know they are not at all bad for drag & drop.

Gaming is the one area where mice are still better, but for actual work trackpads are much nicer. Especially since they can make good use of gestures (the main reason why I could not go back to a mouse for real work).

Re:Classic Confusion

[BasilBrush]

Like the "simplified" trackpads that Apple innovated and everybody else has adopted that are beautiful because they have no buttons but suck really, really badly for drag-drop or select-single-pixel operations.

They don't suck for either of those things. It's actually easier to do both those things than on a trackpad with separate buttons, because the surface area is greater.

It could be that you don't realise it's a forefinger and thumb operation. Forefinger to point, thumb to click.

Sounds like you were too conservative to get away from the mouse at all. Like any change of input device, it takes a couple of days to get used to.

Re:Classic Confusion

[Reapy]

Nah, have had to use a powermac at work, I tried to go all trackpad but need a mouse. I did figure out drag and drop is a hold one point drag with a spare finger, but honestly my hands just hurt too much for all that. I can't for the life of me do the 'explode' gesture, it still takes me 3 tries. When I need to get the cursor in between letters to highlight or drag and drop files around I settle on the mouse, its just much faster and precise. For right click I still prefer a mouse as well.

I have adopted it for scrolling instead of the wheel on occasion as repeated scrolling hurts my wrists. On the other hand they also hurt if I use the trackpad for long as I have to curl my wrists at a weird angle to use it, where as with the mouse I can keep my wrists straight.

All in all it is a a very nice trackpad as far as trackpads go, but by far it doesn't have the versatility to surpass a mouse.

Also, delete, home and end keys please? I know you can cmd left/right and I have sort of gotten used to it, its just not as fast. Delete you can fn + delete key but a backspace centric approach to text editing is slower, Usually the cursor is already on the left of a word, so its faster to get to your delete point to remove character than it is to get to a backspace point.

Been a windows user forever, but i have no qualms about hating the mac, but it does have its share of problems. It doesn't know how many bytes are in a meg, it leaves ds_store files all over the place, and I've never seen explorer crash anywhere near as much as Finder does for the apparent crime of trying to open it up and look at the filesystem.

But yes, the unix shell does win a lot of points.

Re:Classic Confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually to simplify you in fact have to make something more complex - but it's complexity the user does not see.

And you just keep telling yourself that that is, in fact, what Apple does. Like the "simplified" trackpads that Apple innovated and everybody else has adopted that are beautiful because they have no buttons but suck really, really badly for drag-drop or select-single-pixel operations. I pretty much *have* to carry around a USB mouse to get any real work done on my MacBook Pro.

--Jeremy

Trackpads were renowned for their stellar drag-and-drop and single pixel movements, and _nobody_ packed a wireless mouse in their lappy bags before Apple showed up huh?

--Laptop owner laughing at you

Re:Classic Confusion

[Clsid]

You are full of crap. If you used an Apple trackpad on a daily basis you will see how moronic your statement is. Hell, I have bought Mac laptops mainly because of the whole trackpad experience and gestures.

Re:Classic Confusion

[gnasher719]

You are full of crap. If you used an Apple trackpad on a daily basis you will see how moronic your statement is. Hell, I have bought Mac laptops mainly because of the whole trackpad experience and gestures.

Well, some people can't figure out how to start System Preferences and set up the track pad properly. They complain "it's dumbed down so that Grandma can use it", but then it turns out it's not dumbed down enough for _them_.

Re:Classic Confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, delete, home and end keys please? I know you can cmd left/right and I have sort of gotten used to it, its just not as fast.

Home and End are fn-left and fn-right, but those keys don't act like home and end on Windows. cmd-left and cmd-right are the equivalents, and I don't see how they're any slower than finding keys that don't have a standard location on laptops. Certainly it only took me a handful of days to get used to it, and this is from someone who still uses shift-del and shift-ins for cut and paste on Windows.

If you don't like those, perhaps you could get used to ctrl-a and ctrl-e instead. ctrl-d is also your preferred delete operation, and so should be pretty easy to touch-type (especially if you remap caps lock to ctrl, as the die-hard emacs folks like to do).

Re:Classic Confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

"Simpler is not dumber."

True, dat. The more powerful computer is the one that simpler to use. Most people here believe that unless it's complicated, it's not powerful. They're idiots.

Re:Classic Confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung Smart TV's are the future my friends and Google has the Android tv box that turns your flat screen into an Android.. Improvements are needed for both, and the incorporating of a wirless controller system to be able to play games, or better yet a way to use your tablet as the multi-controller for your Android television to play games etc.. It's already here in a sense but like I said improvements are needed...

Steam is intrusive

[Archfeld]

poorly coded, and I absolutely abhor it as a PC service I am cursed to ineract with. The thought of it attaching itself to my TV experience makes me ill.

Re:Steam is intrusive

[westyvw]

Really? It does feel a bit heavy sometimes (for what its delivering anyway) but its not particualary intrusive or bad to use. Certainly not spawn of the devil, like for instance iTunes.
Steam on linux is better (except for the lack of games of course). Alt-tab is perfection, smooth and slick, and etras such as steam folder locations can be anywhere and you can have multiple destinations too.

Re:Steam is intrusive

[Anonymous Coward]

That also struck me as strange. I've never thought Steam was poorly coded.. I can think of a dozen things more obtrusive than Steam. iCrap is pretty crappy, but the horrible design of windows live games immediately comes to mind (at least the PC implementation of such) Big Picture is beautiful on a TV. I'm not sure what's to hate here.

Screenshots

[jones_supa]

At least Apple lets me rate apps! Steam doesn't even let you do that.

What bugs me is that they do not show proper screenshots of many games. There's just lots of cutscenes and concept art, not real gameplay shots.

Apple Pippin

[nonicknameavailable]

It's Apple pippin again

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pippin

30 years

[oh_my_080980980]

You had 30 fucking years to figure it out! You couldn't do it in 3 decades what makes you think you'll EVER do it....

Apple & Gaming

[threeboy]

Apple seems to hate gaming. If they just released a solid bluetooth gamepad for Apple TV & iPads they could destroy consoles. What would you rather do: 1) Buy your kid an expensive console with $60 games. 2) Buy your kid a ton of $1 app style games with a system you may already own. Mind you, the production quality of AAA $60 games is a huge step up but some of them app games are pretty damn good for $1.

Re:Apple & Gaming

[jedidiah]

> What would you rather do:

Let the kid decide. Otherwise you're just wasting money. If you're forcing your brand fetish on your kids, then that's just sad.

Also, not all console games are $60.

Plus the kid has his own money. Let him buy whatever console he wants.

Re:Apple & Gaming

[threeboy]

You sound like you know this imaginary kid better than I do!

Re:Apple & Gaming

[tepples]

If they just released a solid bluetooth gamepad for Apple TV & iPads

How is using swipes on a touch screen as a gamepad not enough?

Re:Apple & Gaming

[threeboy]

Tactile feedback and real buttons just feel better, baby.

It's the ecosystem

[Hjalmar]

Gaben's looking at trends. He isn't a cable TV operator, or NetFlix, and outside of those two groups the largest provider of Internet video on demand is Apple, by a very wide margin - almost more than Amazon, Vudu, and Zune combined. It is a small part of overall VOD pie (pay-TV operators have 72% of the revenue share), but it's a growing share.

At least, that's what NPD says. They don't compare Netflix to iTunes directly, which I would find interesting, but I don't think Gaben sees Netflix as a direct competitor - they're not providing a platform. Not yet, anyway.

Games on Apple TV

[tepples]

How's the latency for iOS games streamed to Apple TV? Are games using on-screen gamepads practical? Or games using pointing? And how likely is it that people will buy a $430 Apple TV/iPad mini bundle instead of, say, a $350 Wii U console?

Re:Games on Apple TV

[BasilBrush]

And how likely is it that people will buy a $430 Apple TV/iPad mini bundle instead of, say, a $350 Wii U console?

No chance whatsoever. But that's not what's going to happen. The Apple TV will undoubtably still be standalone. There's no need to stream the games. Apple TV is an iOS device in itself. The app can run there.

And the games will undoubtably need their input method modifying for Apple TV. Some game types will work worse for being controlled with a controller rather than touch. Some will work better. Some games lend themselves more to touch, some lend themselves more to button presses. Some work just as well with either input type.

Zelda touch; swiping gamepad

[tepples]

Then how do some Zelda games for Nintendo DS (LOZ:PH, LOZ:ST) get away with touch-only control, and single-touch at that? And why can't traditional gamepad oriented genres be adapted to multitouch?

Re:Zelda touch; swiping gamepad

[HaZardman27]

To be fair, there were a lot of complaints about the controls for Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. Trying to roll was especially annoying. The only reason that the controls were at least passable is probably related to the DS's resistive touchscreen and stylus vs a smartphone or tablet's capacitive touchscreen that you operate with a finger. Plus, I don't think the Zelda games for the DS were purely touchscreen, I believe you still used the face buttons for item use (but it's been a long time since I played them, so I'm not positive).

Buy for RT, play on Windows 8 or vice versa

[tepples]

The desktop isn't going away

However, it may lose prominence as developers make games for the Windows Store environment to target Windows RT tablets and Windows Phone 8 phones.

Apple is wide open compared to the consoles

[tepples]

it's as easy as plugging in a cord to your tv, with the added benefit of not having an iOS system. Which I assume would be heavily locked down similar to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod.

These iTrinkets are far less locked down than the major consoles. For about $1000 for hardware (recent Mac mini and an iOS device) plus $100 per year, any two or three-man home-based family business can develop and publish a game. On the consoles, you end up with the problem Robert Pelloni had when he tried to bring his RPG Bob's Game to the Nintendo DS: only developers with "relevant video game industry experience", "financial stability", and a "dedicated secure office" are allowed onto the consoles. To qualify, a developer pretty much has to move to a city like Austin, Boston, or Seattle, and do a multi-year internship with a company already licensed to develop for a major console. Apple is wide open by comparison. The only problem is no buttons, and that can be worked around.

Re:Apple is wide open compared to the consoles

[CMontgomery]

On the consoles, you end up with the problem Robert Pelloni had when he tried to bring his RPG Bob's Game to the Nintendo DS: only developers with "relevant video game industry experience", "financial stability", and a "dedicated secure office" are allowed onto the consoles.

I can imagine it would be hard for the DS. But the Xbox 360 and PS3 have indie and arcade sections for just these people! I really only pay attention to the 360 ones, but some Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) games have really made it big. From 2D platformers, to puzzle games, to 3D shooters, there are tons of great high quality games there. And they are all made by regular people. Here's the steps to get a game on XBLA.

That does cost tens of thousands though. But there is also an indie section where all it costs is $100 to make your game (plus your time of course). There are similar things for the PS3.
It still costs quite a bit of money, like all business ventures, but Microsoft really hit a success with XBLA.

I don't know if this is the top selling game or anything, but Fez made $2 million dollars back in May on XBLA.

And Mr. Pelloni also ...threatened to get the game released on other distribution platforms including Xbox Live Arcade, Steam, the iPhone, and the PlayStation Network. So there are many ways for an indie developer to break into the market.

Re:Apple is wide open compared to the consoles

[tepples]

But the Xbox 360 and PS3 have indie and arcade sections for just these people!

I looked at Sony's Developer License Request Form found here, and the requirements for "mandatory [bold and underlined]" information about "Financial documentation" and "Prior development experience" reminded me of Nintendo's. But you're right that Apple's App Store business model is essentially a copy of Xbox 360's Xbox Live Indie Games business model, provided that all your customers live in one of the ten countries where Indie Games are offered.

iControlPad is expensive

[tepples]

The problem with something like the iControlPad or the iCade 8-Bitty is that I can't think of anybody who's willing to buy a $62 device to play a 99 cent game. On the consoles, either a game is fully designed for the controller that came with the console, or the game comes on a disc and the controller is bundled with the game (e.g. DDR, Wii Fit, Rock Band). How would one bundle a Bluetooth gamepad with a download? Otherwise, phone games are stuck with using swipes to emulate a gamepad.

Closed != closed

[tepples]

Apple's has a reputation for closed platforms, which would make them another Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony.

There's a difference between Apple closed and Nintendo closed. Please read my reply to CMontgomery.

Netflix works on U.S. Wii

[tepples]

Not that it's especially practical, but one can move to the United States on a permanent or temporary visa and download the Netflix app to a U.S. Wii.

Re:Netflix works on U.S. Wii

[MichaelSmith]

Cheaper to by and copy the DVDs I suspect but thanks for the info. I have a friend who travelled in the US recently but he is also an expert at finding torrents to I doubt he finds not being in the US a real issue.

Price of iControlPad

[tepples]

What percent of the market for iOS games thinks a physical gamepad feels better enough to justify the purchase of a $62 iControlPad for use with a 99 cent game?

Re:Price of iControlPad

[threeboy]

Yeah the pricepoint blows and none of this will likely happen. There's a number of 3rd party controllres but the problem is that they don't have official support so they're not in every game. If Apple atleast had a standard/universal controller support it would be awesome. If Apple they did the wiimote thing where it's a remote control for the TV but you could use it as a gampead - ah, we can dream, heh.

Apple should fear gabe newell

[Anonymous Coward]

1. His favorite class is the spy.
2. That's what I get for working at Microsoft
3. Uhhh... What's that number between 2 and oh I can't believe I forgot Left 4 Dead!

android has snes,gameboy,n64 emu

[cheekyboy]

Something iOS will never have.

Gazillians of retro games

Does anyone give a flying fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than linux zealots, who fucking cares?