More 'Steam Box' rumours from Valve

[Badrats Studio]

Bottom line : IF Valve REALLY build a console, imo, it will be no better from current PC-with-Steam-tech and will not be a mainstream comparing to other console from big three.

Easiness, cheap price, and strong publisher support. That's what console lives. If this Valve console need a constant hardware revision, don't bother to call it a console and just a small form factor PC.

[Kiuju2k]

Ok.

[calintz]

tits

[KingOfSentinels]

you keep missing one simple point as well .. i have ONLY ever talked about them working together .. NOT alone .. with regards to the apple/valve meeting .. what part of that is finding it hard to go in one ear/eye work its way up to a memory cell and remain there?

Yeah sorry, missed that bit. I blame 8 hours of travel. Head's on more straight now after getting some sleep. For like 3 hours of the journey I was beside a mother and her 3 kids who she just could not control. Running up and down the aisle, throwing stuff, even spilt some yoghurt shit on my laptop when they kept sitting beside me. Fucking annoying... some guy actually had to shout at them because they kept pulling his bag and the mother did nothing.

And I guess they do fill in the gaps. One's strength is the other's weakness, they'd compliment eachother quite well if they could actually be partners, and not have the control split 70/30 or something like that. Apple would definitely make it more profitable of a console, and would probably not make it industry-leading but definitely make it extremely competitive at the very least, but would push for the console gamers moreso than Valve would. Which is why I'd be a bit skeptical over how much influence they'd have with the direction of the console. I want sexy PC console, not sexy Wii-like console.

Apple are so big I don't think Valve would work with them, but work for them. That's why I think a partnership being on the cards might be not be the first conclusion I would have jumped to when hearing the news.

[darren]

I assume you was on a train .. God I hate trains .. I have to do rush hour time to London tomorrow .. 90£ for a return on a trip that take one hour .. And as I get on half way there will be no seats .l

[Icarus4578]

King, I get where you're coming from. Perhaps the Steam-based Valve console would do extremely well, but what happens if it does succeed on an unprecedented level and then Apple buys out Valve? That's my concern.

[KingOfSentinels]

That is true. Then the console could basically u-turn in its direction if Apple's influence hit, probably make it more 'app'. Well, Apple hasn't shown much interest in gaming so I'm still a bit skeptical that they'll suddenly start now. Valve would do alright with the console. It's not that I think Apple would be bad, they'd just have such a different direction to Valve. Both would do good individually, together... I dunno.

Originally Posted by darren

I assume you was on a train .. God I hate trains .. I have to do rush hour time to London tomorrow .. 90£ for a return on a trip that take one hour .. And as I get on half way there will be no seats .l

Ouch, for 1 hour, £90? With a railcard my average train journey to Cardiff is 6 hours long and I get a reserved seat on both of my changeovers, and it's only £91. Well, I say only. The trains are horrible messes in the UK, they upped the fares and there's constant delays and other retardedness every single time I visit.

I go from Newcastle to Bristol, and then Bristol to Cardiff, and I've been so many times and 50% of the time by the time I get to Bristol the train is delayed long enough that I miss my change-over to Cardiff and have to get another. It's ridiculous.

[Icarus4578]

I could see how Valve would start off with Steam-based service plus add in the prerequisite Apple stores. Should Apple ever decide to buy out Valve, the shoe would be on the other foot. However, I don't think they'd alter an established business model if it were successful. Not at first anyway, but eventually you'd start to see a change.

The one thing that has me intrigued is the inclusion of indie devs being given a prominent position in console gaming. Relying on the likes of Konami, Capcom, etc. just isn't cutting it. Their good releases are too few and far-between whereas there's much more indie devs who will take risks. It would be a refreshing change of pace, perhaps ushering in a new renaissance of home gaming similar to what Nintendo achieved with the NES.

[calintz]

the meeting never happened...

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Valve head Gabe Newell did not actually meet last week as rumored, according to a new podcast interview with Newell.

He squashed the week-old rumor in an interview with the fine folks at Seven Day Cooldown, who were kind enough to let us in on some early excerpts from the fascinating and far-ranging discussion with Newell. He didn't dodge the question:

We actually, we all sent mail to each other, going, "Who's Tim Cook meeting with? Is he meeting with you? I'm not meeting with Tim Cook." So we're... it's one of those rumors that was stated so factually that we were actually confused.

http://kotaku.com/5903555/gabe-newel...g-didnt-happen



pc/steam fanboy tears were funny tho :p

[Kiuju2k]

/thread

[KingOfSentinels]

The thread wasn't even about that meeting originally. It just transformed into it.

[Badrats Studio]

Apparently it was a wearable computer

http://kotaku.com/5941647/valve-is-t...gaming-goggles

The New York Times has a great feature on Valve and some of the things they've been up to recently, including these crazy gaming goggles.

[Beam]

Lolz @ koss and darren.

[Kiuju2k]

doing big things at valve
/thread

[calintz]

Gabe Newell says Valve will release its own console-like PC for the living room

Valve has stayed mostly quiet about its plans to enter the hardware business, but in an interview with Kotaku at last night's Video Game Awards, Gabe Newell confirmed the company's plans to sell its own living room PC that could compete with next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft. The biggest revelation is that Valve seems set to release its own complete hardware and software solution. When we first reported that the company was working on a "Steam Box" back in March, it appeared that Valve was working on a prototype that would establish a baseline for hardware manufacturers, but it wasn't clear if the company would sell its own product or simply release the designs to others. Newell's comments to Kotaku provide a much clearer picture of what's happening; Newell said that he expects companies to start selling PCs designed for the living room next year — which Kotaku says could have Steam preloaded — and that Valve will create its own distinct package.

Newell suggests that the company will create its own carefully managed PC ecosystem that's distinct from the one offered by other hardware partners — a possibility that our own Sean Hollister exposed after looking at the company's comments and actions in recent years, including its aversion to Windows 8, its recent embrace of Linux, and its existing push into the living room with Steam's Big Picture Mode. Newell tells Kotaku that "our hardware will be a very controlled environment," and that some people will want a "turnkey" solution for their living room. "The nice thing about a PC is a lot of different people can try out different solutions," he said. "Customers can find the ones that work best for them."

As a digital distribution platform, Steam is wildly successful, with more than five million concurrent users on any given day and over 50 million users in total (by comparison, Xbox Live has more than 40 million users). But Valve doesn't reap any income from the sale of hardware that runs its platform or the software it hosts, and the company doesn't control Windows, which is the most popular platform among computers running Steam.

Newell stopped short of saying that the company was building a Linux-based Steam OS, but he reportedly said that the next step for the company's living room operation is to enable Big Picture on Steam for Linux. From there, the timeline is still pretty murky — we only know that Newell expects some hardware to show up sometime next year — but Valve's intent to compete in the living room in a big way is no longer a secret.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/8/37...room-steam-box