Microsoft Exec: Valve is not a Console Competitor

Zipa

batlh bIHeghjaj.
Dec 19, 2010
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In other words we are going to smack talk our competetors or potential competetors because we are scared that they are going to eat into our market since they actually focus on games and not all the other shit they stick on XBL like ads (even though people are paying them already)

Personally if Sony and Valve both live up to what they promise then Microsoft will have to raise their game.
Otherwise they will find themselves getting knocked off the top spot for this gen, and frankly they need a wake up call. Shitty business practices like the watermarking of disks so they only work in a single console is really going to piss people off for example and if the competition has a better offering people are going to jump ship.
 

Denamic

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Aug 19, 2009
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albino boo said:
Valve is small compared to the console kings. The market values Sony at $ 162 billion, Microsoft at $66 billion and the estimate of value of valve comes in at $5 billion. The big boy already have world wide physical distribution networks setup, Valve use EA to distribute physical media.
And everyone knows having more money makes the consoles better. That's why the PS3 is 2.45 times better than the 360.
Just because MS and Sony are currently bigger, Valve is still fucking gigantic and a very real threat.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

I never asked for this
Sep 8, 2011
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Right. This is coming from the same company that's been losing money for almost a decade. The same company that thought Windows 8 is a good idea and copying Apple is going to work. The same company that had the same opportunity as Valve to make a decent digital distribution business years ago and they still can't catch up.
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
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well of course, steambox will be a limited PC where focus will be on gaming rather than gaming and other things (you know, the reason PC is much better is that it can do everything), not a console.

Its also funny how people keep rambling about convienience on console over PC when that problem was solved 5 years ago. You do put the disc in, wait 5 minutes to install and can insta-play. and install is a one-time off thing. with online DRM you dont need to put the disc in again either, which makes your disc player live longer. not to mention that you loose your TV when using a console, and a TV that is as good as a standard monitor costs a fortune.

That's why the PS3 is 2.45 times better than the 360.
more.
 

Zeh Don

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Jul 27, 2008
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FloodOne said:
The gamer community is schizophrenic.

You do realize there will be no physical media on the Steam Box, right? No used games, and decent internet connection with a solid bandwidth cap will be requirements. Everything that people have slammed the console makers for will be default settings for the Steam Box.

So yeah, go ahead and root for the Steam Box to be a wild success, but in ten years time, when you can't buy used games or trade in crappy games to recoup some of your cash, remember that you had a hand in changing the market in a bad way.

Captcha- Instantly Skip

You know, I think I will...
What's this? An intelligent, well founded and accurate post on the Escapist about video games? Congratulations, my fine sir, you've ended the world.

Anyway, unless the rumours for the new Xbox are true - the online requirement, blocking used games - I'll stick with Microsoft for the next gen. They might deliver the "middle ground" approach, but frankly that's exactly what I want. I want to go to the store, buy my games, come home and play them. Or download cheaper games over a no-fuss online service. Hardware is suffering from some extreme homogenization - software is what will decide the fate of the next gen consoles. And Microsoft have a bit of a head start in that category in my humble opinion.
 

FloodOne

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Apr 29, 2009
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romanator0 said:
FloodOne said:
The gamer community is schizophrenic.

You do realize there will be no physical media on the Steam Box, right? No used games, and decent internet connection with a solid bandwidth cap will be requirements. Everything that people have slammed the console makers for will be default settings for the Steam Box.

So yeah, go ahead and root for the Steam Box to be a wild success, but in ten years time, when you can't buy used games or trade in crappy games to recoup some of your cash, remember that you had a hand in changing the market in a bad way.

Captcha- Instantly Skip

You know, I think I will...
And your proof for this is where? I use Steam and haven't had any problems with using physical copies of games on it and a functional offline mode really helps considering my unstable internet connection. So unless you have a quote of someone somewhere from Valve saying this stuff then I find it highly unlikely that the Steam Box is going to not support physical media or require a constant connection when the current version of Steam doesn't do these things.
Look at what Steam is. It's a service, not a piece of hardware. It is a digital platform for software distribution. One that doesn't allow for trade ins. And while it is true that you can buy a physical copy of a PC game, install it and activate it on Steam, buying a boxed copy of a PC title is something a VERY small portion of the market chooses to do. Plus, you can't get the sale price for a boxed product that you can get through Steam, with it's low overhead and light DRM functions. Sure, Steam doesn't require you to have an always on internet connection, but I would hazard a guess that a large majority of it's users use the service to download their software, which does require stable internet and solid bandwidth caps. Not to mention, if your library is even a decent size, the constant background downloading of patches and the like will eat away at your limit quickly. In the last month, Steam has chewed up 15gb alone in updates to my library. What happens to the consumer who's ISP only allows 25gb a month? How do you propose they game through Steam when game sizes will continue to increase as the next generation begins?
 

Antari

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Nov 4, 2009
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He may love Gabe, but he doesn't respect him. And thats his biggest mistake.
 

CryoSynth

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Jun 2, 2011
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The biggest thing to me about people such as this suggesting Valve don't know what they're in for is that this isn't just a sudden decision for them. How long were there rumours that Valve was experimenting with hardware before they began to hint at a Steam Box, and how long was that before they officially announced they were going ahead with it?

I just think, regardless of whether people like the idea or Valve in general, they aren't a company to skimp on informing themselves before making decisions. Everything they've done has been a gradual, calculated move. There's so many concepts they toyed with in TF2 before deciding they had something and spreading them into other games. Things that are big now, like the workshop.

Big Picture mode already tested the waters for how Steam might operate in the living room, and it seems like the interface is well-thought-out. The lotus flower keyboard concept is amazing and I don't know why the other consoles didn't come up with something like it sooner; its just simply straight up faster and easier than the current standard of throwing up a normal keyboard layout and navigating back and forth across it.

That to me shows that they've put serious thought in. If they're really going ahead with a Steam Box, I quite believe they are fully prepared.


As a side note, I love some of the ideas they've talked about alongside the Steambox. Things like using biometrics to measure the player's physical state in order to tell when they're physiologically excited and riled up, then using that to try to pace a game experience. Not to mention the stuff about eye-tracking and VR. That sort of stuff seems a lot more interesting than motion controls - and the best the established console brands can come up with is copying each others' motion controls? If Valve's ideas bear fruit, they'll set themselves up as the innovators who the rest will be trying to copycat just like they did with motion control.


Though I'm not sure if I'd get a Steam Box, I do hope it succeeds, simply because Steam's dominance of the PC market means if they succeed with a sort of standardised PC (with tiers as has been talked about; the theoretical low-range, mid-range, and upper-range variations of the Steam Box), they could unify PC developers into adhering to some such standards - finally removing the biggest barrier between PC and console gaming: compatibility and stability issues.

Then again it may not work out anything of the sort. But if nothing else, it's very much a step in the right direction, and Valve seems to be the only ones willing to take it.