During a podcast interview with Seven Day Cooldown, Valve confirmed that they are working on hardware for the home market. Gabe Newell has confirmed that he desires this new hardware platform to be both present in the mobile space and in home use - as an alternative to the closed ecosystems available from traditional console / device manufacturers such as Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Apple. No word yet on what technology would be included in the platform, but Newell stated on the podcast that it would be "out there".
Steam is quickly becoming the PC gaming client / store of choice, with over 25 million users, over 1000 games available for purchase, 12 billion player-minutes of game time logged, and more significantly, every month, users have the Steam client open for more than 75 billion minutes.
Clearly, the Steam client user experience is a very important one for PC gamers - along with a personal achievements system, Steam frequently acts as a matchmaking service and a voice service for players. However, oddly, while Valve commented on an open platform for games, they did not directly state that Steam would reside on this platform. It's hard to imagine a world where this wouldn't happen, however.
As far as Valve's competition in this market:
"They build a shiny sparkling thing that attracts users and then they control people's access to those things, it's ominous that the world seems to be moving away from open platforms," Valve's CEO Gabe Newell stated, regarding traditional console manufacturers and Apple.
Sort By:
No comments were found for this thread.