What Valve's Announcements Mean for Gaming

Now that we have the full picture of Valve's efforts to bring PC gaming to the living room (SteamOS, dedicated hardware, and a fresh controller design), people are starting to analyze what those efforts will mean for gaming, and what Valve must do to be successful. Eurogamer's Oli Welsh points out that even if Steam Machines aren't able to take the market away from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, they put us a step closer to the final console generation. "Valve has hopefully sidestepped the most depressing aspect of console gaming: the enforced obsolescence that makes you consign your entire games collection to a dusty cupboard every five years." GamesRadar notes that Valve's approach is fundamentally different from that of the current console manufacturers because it's about putting more power into the hands of the users. "The takeaway from SteamOS, then, is that openness breeds innovation. Valve's putting the very source code of its operating system in the hands of everyone who wants it just to see what happens. Comparatively, Microsoft is pushing its Windows Store, turning Windows into an increasingly closed platform (i.e. one that charges costly development licensing fees and restricts access to certain content providers)." Everyone's curious to see how the controller will perform, so Gamasutra and Kotaku reached out to a number of game developers who have experimented with prototypes already. "[Dan Tabar of indie studio Data Realms] said the configuration map for the controller allows you to do 'pretty much anything.' For example, developers can slice up a pad into quarters, each one representing a different input, or even into eight radial sections, again, each section representing whatever you want, mapping to key combinations, or to the mouse." Tommy Refenes, co-creator of Super Meat Boy, wrote an in-depth description of his experience with the device. He summed up his reaction by saying, "Great Start, needs some improvements, but I could play any game I wanted with it just fine."

Comments

Growing weary of "Steam Box" talk

[theurge14]

Gabe and Valve keep talking about innovation but it's now been nearly 3 years since they floated the piston box prototype and with this new announcement we'll be waiting for another prototype in spring 2014. Exactly how long does it take to build a special purpose PC? That is all this Steam Machine is after all, correct?

The last time I paid attention to what Valve had to say it was Gabe back in 2010 or so talking about how with the Steam platform they would be delivering small incremental updates to Half-Life 2 instead of the "lengthy" episodes or even longer Half-Life 3 box sequels. Sorry Gabe, but 2014 is around the corner meaning it's been 7 years since Half-Life 2 Episode 2. You want the industry to follow your company's lead with Steam and games on demand type development then please lead by example.