One Platform to Rule Them All

[Toadfish1]

Yeah, great promo. Seriously, people!
Valve isn't even giving any effort to market Steam Boxes - like Ouya or WiiU. So why every "sophisticated gamers" - including author of this hype-article - pulling from nothing an absurd ideas of "It could be done - Valve will succeed", when, reality is different.
Stop believing the hype - Steam Boxes are worthless and too overpriced. More that this - venders have multiple version - which will confuse mass. consumer base.
So, this article is so facepalm.

And yet, I have vastly more interest in one than either the PS4 or XBOne.

Because at least it'll have games I'll want to play.

And yet you won't because you'll be too cheap to put down the cash for one when you've spent triple the price of a console on your PC.

The Steambox - the perfect console for PC gamers and absolutely fucking nobody else. And we know how much PC gamers like to buy consoles.

 

[Raziel]

Here's some actual stats on this. Valve has 75 million active accounts, while xBox Live has 48 million (counting both free and gold) and PSN wins at a whopping 120 million likely due to their mobile platforms. However, it's not specified whether XBL or PSN counts non-active users so the comparison might even be more favourable to Steam. Either way, having more than XBL makes it a serious competitor anyways.

You Need to remember a significant portion of consoles are never connected to the internet. So thats 120 online users plus probably tens of millions offline users.

The <a href=http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey>vast minority of Steam users use Intel integrated graphics, and while for some reason the most recent Steam hardware survey doesn't let you browse the specific GPUs (last month's did, not sure what happened) any dedicated GPU made in the past couple of years can easily out-power the 360 even with any benefits optimization would bring (not to mention the concept of console optimization has become less and less relevant over the years).

My laptop has radeon graphics and still doesn't meet min specs for any current game. My desk top one has specs that are more than twice as good and only some current games work at all and thats with everything turned all the way down.

I don't understand this at all. Steam does sales because they money not because they're trying to attract people to their store although that is a happy side-effect. Unless you're arguing that Steam's pricing will force Sony and M$ to start pricing their games as competitively, in which case that's a good thing for everyone.

Steam is so popular because of the prices. Thats why everyone goes there originally. Steam sales might make little indie titles more money because it gives them more exposure. I highly doubt it has the same boost for GTAV or AAA games. My point is if steambox somehow captures a third of the console market you will NOT find the console games on it for a cheaper price. The reason pc ports are cheaper is sony and M$ dismiss that market as insignificant.

From what I understand the $500 Steambox is intended to be a "baseline" for minimum specs at a decent frame-rate while higher priced boxes are their if you wish to run the games at higher settings. Although admittedly Valve hasn't done a great job managing the Steambox so far so things may be completely different.

The $500 steambox is not a console that has been manufactured optimized for gaming. Its a crappy pc thats assembled by a third party, so it will be overpriced for the parts, that has steam os installed on it. I HIGHLY doubt it will be able to run all the games that will be coming out on the ps4 or xbo. And its hardware will be outdated WAY faster than the console and receive probably no support.

You do realize most AAA-games in the past year have been ported to Steam or Origin? The only one that hasn't off the top of my head is GTA 5. This analogy makes no sense.

Not to mention, in defense of iPhones, the reason AAA games don't work there is more because the purchasing demographic is mostly casual gamers not willing to invest that much time into a game and less because they don't make enough revenue.

The AAA games are being ported as a way to get every penny they can. But the devs count on the console sales to support the cost of making the games. The steam sales are not something they depend upon.

There are 2 types of people on steam. Those with high end pcs who buy the games there to get the best looking version of a game. And the people who buy games there just to get cheap prices. And I expect that most steam users are in the 2nd group. Therefore steam as a whole is like the iphone. People who won't buy the game unless its like 50% or more off the console price. Buying tombraider for $10 does not support AAA development.

 

[Stabinbac]

And yet you won't because you'll be too cheap to put down the cash for one when you've spent triple the price of a console on your PC.

The steam boxes aren't a gaming PC compliment. They're a gaming PC substitute. If you have a gaming PC you're probably already using Steam. Valve doesn't give a shit about you buying a dedicated Steam Machine as well. You can even dual boot with SteamOS and the PC IS a Steam Machine.

It's not like Microsoft who created a device that competes with themselves. Either method you choose with Valve goes to the same store.

 

[infohippie]

It is interesting how some people appear to really be getting their knickers in a twist about this article, as though the high number of Steam subscribers threatens them personally in some way. Were they looking forward to the schadenfreude of the long-predicted, never-arriving "death of the PC", perhaps? Are they disappointed that a platform they long considered irrelevant is proving to be more relevant, and a much larger market, than ever before? What about this news bothers them so?

 

[PMAvers]

Yeah, great promo. Seriously, people!
Valve isn't even giving any effort to market Steam Boxes - like Ouya or WiiU. So why every "sophisticated gamers" - including author of this hype-article - pulling from nothing an absurd ideas of "It could be done - Valve will succeed", when, reality is different.
Stop believing the hype - Steam Boxes are worthless and too overpriced. More that this - venders have multiple version - which will confuse mass. consumer base.
So, this article is so facepalm.

And yet, I have vastly more interest in one than either the PS4 or XBOne.

Because at least it'll have games I'll want to play.

And yet you won't because you'll be too cheap to put down the cash for one when you've spent triple the price of a console on your PC.

Sure I will. I only spent around $500 on my gaming rig a couple years ago, and it still handles games fine.

The 3x number is used by people who don't know what the hell they're talking about.

 

[Schmeiser]

Yeah, great promo. Seriously, people!
Valve isn't even giving any effort to market Steam Boxes - like Ouya or WiiU. So why every "sophisticated gamers" - including author of this hype-article - pulling from nothing an absurd ideas of "It could be done - Valve will succeed", when, reality is different.
Stop believing the hype - Steam Boxes are worthless and too overpriced. More that this - venders have multiple version - which will confuse mass. consumer base.
So, this article is so facepalm.

And yet, I have vastly more interest in one than either the PS4 or XBOne.

Because at least it'll have games I'll want to play.

And yet you won't because you'll be too cheap to put down the cash for one when you've spent triple the price of a console on your PC.

Sure I will. I only spent around $500 on my gaming rig a couple years ago, and it still handles games fine.

The 3x number is used by people who don't know what the hell they're talking about.

I too bought a PC for 500 that can handle any game out there, i may not be able to turn everything on super ultra high with AA x16 but i can run everything on medium to high. The only problem i have is my processor is overheating but that's the company's fault not mine and i'm too lazy to get it replaced. So ye the 3x number is mostly people talking out of their asses and i live in a country where the PC expenses are quite bigger than in some "modern" countries.

Some people love consoles, some people love PCs deal with it. I personally don't understand consoles, i just connect my PC with my huge TV, buy any gamepad i want, download any emulator i want and just destroy my friends in super smash bros on my pc with the original n64 gamepad

P.S. Steam is awesome

 

[bificommander]

I do shop at Gamers Gate. But when 80% of my purchases don't give me a download link, but a Steam activation key for my game, it's not going to do much to Steam's hegemony of course.

The only other platform I use to actually purchase games is Good Old Games. Which is cool. If possible, I like to buy my games there. But of course, they don't carry quite as many new games. Still, if the reviews of Age of Wonders 3 are good, I'll buy it there.

 

[Kahani]

The PS3 failure rate was better than the Xbox 360, but still pretty embarrassing at 10%.

Not sure why you'd consider that embarrassing. 10% failure after nearly a decade is actually not bad at all for electronics.

I wholeheartedly agree, but there's 1 single problem preventing the PC being as mainstream as a console.

No there isn't. The entire point of the article was that PCs are at least as mainstream as consoles. And it's particularly silly to suggest that patches are a problem unique to PCs. Maybe back in the '90s that might have been the case, but console games are just as likely to come with day-1 patches these days.

The PC market is huge and spread out and has a wide range of people valuing things differently.

Whereas console gamers are mindless drones who all value everything exactly the same?

Those 75 million active users include the guy who bought Rome Total War in a humble bundle and plays that every month or so, but nothing else. It includes people who only play indies, who only play MOBAs, who only play RTS

And the console numbers include people who only bought a PS3 as a bluray player or for streaming TV and have never played a single game on it. It includes people who only play indies, who only play a single FPS game, and so on. It's just plain silly to suggest that this argument only applies to PCs.

And of course, the console numbers include every single person who could possibly be gaming on a console. The PC numbers include only those who use one particular shop to buy (some of) their games.

I bet CoD Ghosts sold more on the PS4 and Xbox One than it did on the PC already and those install bases are going to grow.

Sure, but that actually counters your above point - there are a lot of people who buy CoD every year and nothing else. The fact that one franchise sells well says absolutely nothing about the attractiveness of a platform to other developers and other genres.

 

[The White Hunter]

Steambox: Why play thousands of games on a proper PC when you can play only things ported to a shitty version of Debian that auto-runs Big Picture on startup.

Seriously, I don't really get the steambox, they mostly cost too much, the OS is mostly redundant considering how small a portion of Steams games actually run on it compared to windows 7 or 8.1.

I also refuse to endorse a steam monopoly, most of my steam keys come from outside of steam, because there's usually a better deal on GMG, or Amazon, or Game, or the Humble store.

Steam is great, but we shouldn't allow Valve a monopoly.

 

[Matthi205]

How many Steam accounts consist of alts made for the purposes of farming tradable equipment in F2P games? Oh, you didn't consider that? Why am I not surprised?

If we start considering these factors, we'll get nowhere, as we'll just find more and more of them. For example, what about the significant overlap between X360 and XBOne users? Or the not-so-insignificant overlap between PS4 and X360 users? Not even speaking of the overlap between that and PC, and the possibility of people owning multiple consoles. We could also count a ton of people on steam that use PCs with Intel HD graphics out (as those are quite often incapable of driving a lot of games), but where would we get by doing that?

When it comes to the Steambox, I'm not exactly sure what to make of it. On one side it's overpriced for what it gives you (one of the reasons for me highly disliking Apple products), but on the other side it runs Debian, which means we could get more games running on Linux and thus get away from the nonsense that is Windows and get better performance while we're at it.

Also, let's face it: quite literally everyone these days has a PC, meaning that the barrier to entry to PC gaming is quite low... while console gaming requires that you go out and buy a $400 device that has a quite limited selection of games (when compared to the sheer limitless library that the PC can access, which includes Wii, Gamecube, PS1/2 and just about all consoles of the 6th generation and earlier, as well as an astonishing amount of older AAA titles, new AAA titles, indie titles... and lest we forget, you can play pretty much anything with a controller and actually change the key mappings to suit you instead of being stuck with what the game designer though of as best, which may be horrible for you - like having "interact" on B/circle instead of having it bound to the more sensible X/square or A/cross buttons).

 

[Nimzabaat]

Now doesn't this article directly contradict this...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/10630-Steam-Machines

Steam is the bargain bin of the video game industry. Nobody (except indies) makes a game intending for it to be in the bargain bin, that's just where they end up after any major profit has been made. In it's own way Steam is bad for the industry because the triple-A publishers are willing to risk less if there's a chance that people won't buy their product at full price and instead pay another company to add DRM to their product. Taking risks can be good for everybody, just look at Xcom (the good one).

 

[medv4380]

Keeping all this in mind, I ran into an interesting figure cited at the Steam Dev days, showing that there were 75 million active Steam users as of the end of 2013

What a waist of statistics. You wasted time and effort looking up "active" Steam Users. You should have just pulled up the stats for the last 48 hours [http://store.steampowered.com/stats/]. Guess what, Steam has between 3.5M, and 7.5M active users. The 75 million number is like counting all the dead xbox 360's, and duplicate family accounts. My Brother, His Wife, and His Daughter all have "Active" steam accounts and you're effectively triple counting him by using the 75 million number. Do you count each household member who plays a console?

A better way would be to compare the steam concurrent user number to the number of users concurrently connected to XBox Live, and PSN. I'm not sure if Nintendo is setup for concurrent connections in the Wii Era so there probably isn't any data to compare there. From what little I can tell from the Live and PSN data I'd say the consoles would rofl stomp the steam numbers, and then you'd knowingly be under counting consoles because of a majority of offline users.

This better have just been a poorly thought out April Fools article. I'd hate for someone to actually believe that the stats were proper.

 

[clippen05]

But those 75 million people don't end up becoming more sales. The console titles still sell consistently more than the PC versions. The PC market is huge and spread out and has a wide range of people valuing things differently. Those 75 million active users include the guy who bought Rome Total War in a humble bundle and plays that every month or so, but nothing else. It includes people who only play indies, who only play MOBAs, who only play RTS... the market is a lot more fractured than the console market.

You could say literally the exact same thing about the console market. You have people that just buy the newest iteration of FIFA or Madden games every year, you have people that just buy the latest iteration of COD and Battlefield every year, you have people that buy the console to mainly use as an media center, you have people that only play singleplayer games, the list goes on. There is just as much spread in the console market as on PC.

 

[Nimzabaat]

Keeping all this in mind, I ran into an interesting figure cited at the Steam Dev days, showing that there were 75 million active Steam users as of the end of 2013

What a waste of statistics. You wasted time and effort looking up "active" Steam Users. You should have just pulled up the stats for the last 48 hours [http://store.steampowered.com/stats/]. Guess what, Steam has between 3.5M, and 7.5M active users. The 75 million number is like counting all the dead xbox 360's, and duplicate family accounts. My Brother, His Wife, and His Daughter all have "Active" steam accounts and you're effectively triple counting him by using the 75 million number. Do you count each household member who plays a console?

A better way would be to compare the steam concurrent user number to the number of users concurrently connected to XBox Live, and PSN. I'm not sure if Nintendo is setup for concurrent connections in the Wii Era so there probably isn't any data to compare there. From what little I can tell from the Live and PSN data I'd say the consoles would rofl stomp the steam numbers, and then you'd knowingly be under counting consoles because of a majority of offline users.

This better have just been a poorly thought out April Fools article. I'd hate for someone to actually believe that the stats were proper.

Good point. I'm an "active" Steam user, but I haven't spent more than $20 total on Steam in the past five or ten years. If all Steam users were like that it's no wonder companies put such a big emphasis on consoles.

 

[st0pnsw0p]

You do realize that there are often multiple people using the same console, right? Comparing active Steam accounts to active PSN or XBL accounts would make more sense, but even then not everyone who games on consoles has an online account whereas everyone who plays on Steam has to have an account.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Good article Shamus, shame this is another topic that's doomed to degrade into another PC vs console thread with the PCDF in full swing since the previous page, especially with the "stop teh PC hate!", as if that's ever going to happen, especially for the console side.

As for the Steambox's I don't see them ever being much use for me, maybe for the few people that can't decide between buying/building a PC or buying a console but even then they are just micro PC's with a Linux variant slapped on in order to try strengthening the whole "Linux is the future of gaming" sentiment.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Keeping all this in mind, I ran into an interesting figure cited at the Steam Dev days, showing that there were 75 million active Steam users as of the end of 2013

What a waist of statistics. You wasted time and effort looking up "active" Steam Users. You should have just pulled up the stats for the last 48 hours [http://store.steampowered.com/stats/]. Guess what, Steam has between 3.5M, and 7.5M active users. The 75 million number is like counting all the dead xbox 360's, and duplicate family accounts. My Brother, His Wife, and His Daughter all have "Active" steam accounts and you're effectively triple counting him by using the 75 million number. Do you count each household member who plays a console?

A better way would be to compare the steam concurrent user number to the number of users concurrently connected to XBox Live, and PSN. I'm not sure if Nintendo is setup for concurrent connections in the Wii Era so there probably isn't any data to compare there. From what little I can tell from the Live and PSN data I'd say the consoles would rofl stomp the steam numbers, and then you'd knowingly be under counting consoles because of a majority of offline users.

This better have just been a poorly thought out April Fools article. I'd hate for someone to actually believe that the stats were proper.

Or even better, have Microsoft tell us the numbers.

Xbox Live: 48 million people and growing.

http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/live

 

[Clovus]

I don't understand this at all. Steam does sales because they money not because they're trying to attract people to their store although that is a happy side-effect. Unless you're arguing that Steam's pricing will force Sony and M$ to start pricing their games as competitively, in which case that's a good thing for everyone.

Steam is so popular because of the prices. Thats why everyone goes there originally. Steam sales might make little indie titles more money because it gives them more exposure. I highly doubt it has the same boost for GTAV or AAA games. My point is if steambox somehow captures a third of the console market you will NOT find the console games on it for a cheaper price. The reason pc ports are cheaper is sony and M$ dismiss that market as insignificant.

You're not familiar with the concept of "price discrimination", are you? Games aren't price at $60 because that's how much they need to be to cover costs. They are priced that way, especially on consoles, because that's the price that people are willing to pay. The console market is skewed because of used games. The publishers stick to the higher price in order to get as much as possible from those willing to pay for a new copy.

Steam doesn't really have this problem. Games launch at full price. The publishers then start introducing lower and lower prices to grab more sales. Keeping the price high will lose them money because there is a large audience that is not willing to pay $60.

How would MS or Sony not dismissing the PC have any effect on that? A small number of ports would stay at the $60 price? Not really a problem when there are hundreds of other games to play. Nothing Sony or MS does is going to stop Steam (and other PC download sites) from selling cheap games.

Now doesn't this article directly contradict this...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/10630-Steam-Machines

Steam is the bargain bin of the video game industry. Nobody (except indies) makes a game intending for it to be in the bargain bin, that's just where they end up after any major profit has been made. In it's own way Steam is bad for the industry because the triple-A publishers are willing to risk less if there's a chance that people won't buy their product at full price and instead pay another company to add DRM to their product. Taking risks can be good for everybody, just look at Xcom (the good one).

You can keep on believing that, and I'll keep enjoying and supporting devs through Steam, Humble Bundle, etc. The idea that Steam is somehow bad for the industry is just nonsense. That's like saying competition is bad. Oh, no, I can't sell my AAA quality linear shooter for $60 because all these annoying smaller companies are making awesome games and selling them for $10! Steam is destroying the industry! That only make sense if the "industry" is nothing but a small handful of titles that sell well on consoles.

In reality, Steam has made it possible for a huge range of companies (from tiny one-man developers to AAA quality companies like CD Projekt) to thrive.

The maker of niche-RPGs like Avernum once thought he didn't want to be in the "bargain bin". His blog shows how his decision to "de-value" his product increased his sales many fold.

AAA game companies are simply risk averse no matter what. Yeah, I guess we'd have more diverse AAA games if we could somehow guarantee large numbers of sales at $60, but that's not reality. To somehow claim that Steam is stopping that dream world from existing is silly.

 

[Nimzabaat]

You can keep on believing that, and I'll keep enjoying and supporting devs through Steam, Humble Bundle, etc. The idea that Steam is somehow bad for the industry is just nonsense. That's like saying competition is bad. Oh, no, I can't sell my AAA quality linear shooter for $60 because all these annoying smaller companies are making awesome games and selling them for $10! Steam is destroying the industry! That only make sense if the "industry" is nothing but a small handful of titles that sell well on consoles.

In reality, Steam has made it possible for a huge range of companies (from tiny one-man developers to AAA quality companies like CD Projekt) to thrive.

The maker of niche-RPGs like Avernum once thought he didn't want to be in the "bargain bin". His blog shows how his decision to "de-value" his product increased his sales many fold.

AAA game companies are simply risk averse no matter what. Yeah, I guess we'd have more diverse AAA games if we could somehow guarantee large numbers of sales at $60, but that's not reality. To somehow claim that Steam is stopping that dream world from existing is silly.

You probably should have followed the link before commenting but i'll sum it up for you: Consoles won the PC vs Console war a long time ago. Why? Because Steam sank their own ship. That's why I find it funny that Shamus is saying almost the exact opposite of what he said before. You are correct though in that Steam is only bad for the PC market (when was the last time someone paid store prices for a PC title?) and not video games as a whole.

You're also right in that people should support whatever they like. I just happen to believe that there are companies that deserve your full support. I really like CD Projekt so when they released the Witcher 2 I bought two copies of it new because I love what they do, want them to keep doing it, and I can afford to support them. Buying the same game for $2 on a Steam sale sends them a very different message.

 

[Clovus]

You can keep on believing that, and I'll keep enjoying and supporting devs through Steam, Humble Bundle, etc. The idea that Steam is somehow bad for the industry is just nonsense. That's like saying competition is bad. Oh, no, I can't sell my AAA quality linear shooter for $60 because all these annoying smaller companies are making awesome games and selling them for $10! Steam is destroying the industry! That only make sense if the "industry" is nothing but a small handful of titles that sell well on consoles.

In reality, Steam has made it possible for a huge range of companies (from tiny one-man developers to AAA quality companies like CD Projekt) to thrive.

The maker of niche-RPGs like Avernum once thought he didn't want to be in the "bargain bin". His blog shows how his decision to "de-value" his product increased his sales many fold.

AAA game companies are simply risk averse no matter what. Yeah, I guess we'd have more diverse AAA games if we could somehow guarantee large numbers of sales at $60, but that's not reality. To somehow claim that Steam is stopping that dream world from existing is silly.

You probably should have followed the link before commenting but i'll sum it up for you: Consoles won the PC vs Console war a long time ago. Why? Because Steam sank their own ship. That's why I find it funny that Shamus is saying almost the exact opposite of what he said before. You are correct though in that Steam is only bad for the PC market (when was the last time someone paid store prices for a PC title?) and not video games as a whole.

You're also right in that people should support whatever they like. I just happen to believe that there are companies that deserve your full support. I really like CD Projekt so when they released the Witcher 2 I bought two copies of it new because I love what they do, want them to keep doing it, and I can afford to support them. Buying the same game for $2 on a Steam sale sends them a very different message.

No, I was already familiar with the link; I didn't agree with him.

Paying the price that a developer is asking for is "fully" supporting that developer. I don't think you were fully supporting them; why not buy 10 copies? Piracy is obviously not supporting and, while buying used isn't morally wrong or anything, it doesn't help.

Steam "sank their own ship"? Which is why their profits continue to grow and grow? What are you talking about? I've been in the "PC Market" for almost 30 years. Steam (or rather digital distribution) has brought about a new golden age of PC gaming. I have more access now to better games at a lower price than any other time in the past. And those companies making the games are gowing in number and profitting. How is that sinking a ship?

I've owned many consoles, but only bought a small number of games on them. I'd drop a ton of money and have to grind every drop out of the game. And if the game sucked? Too bad. I have no interest in going back to that.

It's cool that you've convinced yourself that you're saving the industry by overpaying for games, but you have no evidence or logical explanation how Steam's pricing is bad.

Ya, when millions of people spend $10 or $15 on the Witcher it did send CD Projekt a message: cheap digital sales are fantastic. So, what did CD Projekt do? They started their own digital download platform to sell cheap games: GOG. And, yeah, they sell their own titles on there for cheap. Do you really think CD Projekt is unhappy that I'm planning on giving them my money? Sure, they'll gladly take whatever you will give them, but that has almost zero effect on their ability to keep making games and keep making money. The cost of development is easily covered when you have a wide (and as explained in this article, getting wider) market. You don't have to keep prices high when you can have massive numbers of sales. That's not a bad thing.

I can just imagine CD Projekt rolling around in their money pit wishing they could go back to a closed system where they can only hope to make money by forcing their customer's to pay $60. Just ludicrous. Do you also think CD Projekt loves giving a huge chunk of their money to MS and Sony just for the right to even have their game on those consoles? I bet they just hate keeping all that cash for themselves on GOG or paying a smaller percentage to Steam.