Valve Not Interested in Streaming Games like OnLive

[Greg Tito]

Valve Not Interested in Streaming Games like OnLive

Steam works just fine the way it is.

Back when Steam came online in 2003, most people thought digital distribution of games was a risky move. Valve blew that notion out of the water with a slick interface and easy management of your game library, not to mention all the social features. Services like Onlive and Gaikai that carry the burden of graphics processing somewhere else and only stream the video output to your computer might have been another leap in gaming delivery, but Valve has no plans to ape those competitors. Speaking at a panel at the Develop conference in Brighton, notables from Valve like TF2 designer Robin Walker and biz dev guy Jason Holtman said they like the way Steam works now. Streaming games is far from a priority for Valve.

"Those [game-streaming technologies] are really interesting to us, but they're not in our short-term plans," said Holtman. "We see lots of advantages in the way games work now".

"We love cloud gaming and we think we do it already," added Walker, citing the cloud saving feature and the ability to download games to any location using your Steam account.

"We're not so excited by distribution," Walker continued. "We're excited by a change in customer experience."

In other words, the way the game gets to the player in the backend is less vital to Valve's model than ensuring a solid play experience.

I can get behind that.

Source: Gamespot [http://www.gamespot.com/news/valve-streaming-not-in-our-short-term-plans-6386424]

Permalink

 

[Rainboq]

As a Canadian, the thought of 'cloud computing/gaming' terrifies me, and here's why. 97% of our country have ISPs that give us 60 Gigabytes per month of bandwidth for about 60 dollars per month. If there was no alternative to cloud computing, Canadians would be screwed when it comes to usage. Plus, I like being able to know where and what my hardware is and be able to tinker with it.

 

[GAunderrated]

Seeing as how ISP are trying to restrict bandwidth due to the recent spectrum crunch (google it if you dont know) id say cloud gaming is never going to materialize to anything mainstream until we solve the current problems.

 

[robert01]

As a Canadian, the thought of 'cloud computing/gaming' terrifies me, and here's why. 97% of our country have ISPs that give us 60 Gigabytes per month of bandwidth for about 60 dollars per month. If there was no alternative to cloud computing, Canadians would be screwed when it comes to usage. Plus, I like being able to know where and what my hardware is and be able to tinker with it.

^This. As a Canadian I had the option of no data cap, but shitty data rates, or vice versa. I get a 175GB a month and normally cut it close. Streaming games would not be an option for me. Also as a PC gamer I like diving into ini files, tweaking the game, and modding it. I didn't spend the money on high end hardware to have it reduced to a super console.

 

[Roboto]

Seeing as how ISP are trying to restrict bandwidth due to the recent spectrum crunch (google it if you dont know) id say cloud gaming is never going to materialize to anything mainstream until we solve the current problems.

Leaving that as an open ended "google it" is fairly unwise, since my first result is
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/06/20/spectrum-crunch-is-a-lie.aspx#.T_31W_VFmAc
which would disprove your point :/

 

[GAunderrated]

Seeing as how ISP are trying to restrict bandwidth due to the recent spectrum crunch (google it if you dont know) id say cloud gaming is never going to materialize to anything mainstream until we solve the current problems.

Leaving that as an open ended "google it" is fairly unwise, since my first result is
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/06/20/spectrum-crunch-is-a-lie.aspx#.T_31W_VFmAc
which would disprove your point :/

Sorry I thought people could filter out the obvious debunker trolls. Here is a simplified version of the conflict via extra credits. Enjoy

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/spectrum-crunch

 

[Roboto]

Seeing as how ISP are trying to restrict bandwidth due to the recent spectrum crunch (google it if you dont know) id say cloud gaming is never going to materialize to anything mainstream until we solve the current problems.

Leaving that as an open ended "google it" is fairly unwise, since my first result is
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/06/20/spectrum-crunch-is-a-lie.aspx#.T_31W_VFmAc
which would disprove your point :/

Sorry I thought people could filter out the obvious debunker trolls. Here is a simplified version of the conflict via extra credits. Enjoy

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/spectrum-crunch

Mad props, sir.

Going to edit this now so I don't sound like a doucher: yes, I know we are running out of pipe. We need more pipe but can't really make more, just gotta use it better.

 

[grigjd3]

I can see two sides to understanding these methods of distribution. Initially, streamed video of gameplay seems fairly attractive. I don't have to keep my computer at high end and the games come straight to me. On the other hand, it seems like an investment sink for the companies providing the streaming service. Effectively, it means they have to constantly ensure they have enough computing power for all their clients. It's a linear relationship. That is, if I have ten more customers, that requires the same amount of computing power for those ten customers. Each one requires an equal investment. There is no economy of scale. Further, the infrastructure has to be upgraded every time the standard for graphics increases. If you aren't constantly upgrading a large quantity of expensive infrastructure, you're falling behind. With the online store model, you simply have to provide enough bandwidth for one-time downloads and you don't worry about all the extra hardware to run the games. That's someone else's problem. The more I think about it, the more streaming games sounds like a money sink. Further, it doesn't even have a real marketing advantage. While it's true that the box I buy to stream OnLive is less expensive, it still is limited in it's output to the current expectation. When that expectation goes up, I will still have to buy a new box. The more I think about it, the more it sounds like streaming games is a very bad business model.

 

[medv4380]

Good. Valve actually knows what they are doing. Now if only others would think so clearly.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Yes, you must maintain your principles no matter what!

Just like EA never making any sales on Origin or you never making any in game benefits for wearing hats besides cosmetic ones!

 

[ResonanceSD]

The minimum specs.


Get a PC that can manage them (for most games it's hilariously cheap to do so), or buy an X360 instead.

 

[Ickorus]

Glad they have no plans for it, I've tried Gaikai and Onlive and that minuscule delay between making an action and having the game react to it makes many games completely unplayable to me; same reason I despise mouse smoothing.

 

[rvdm88]

97% of our country have ISPs that give us 60 Gigabytes per month of bandwidth for about 60 dollars per month.

Thats outrageous, i could get that much data from the internet in a matter of 2 hours....

 

[BeerTent]

As a Canadian, the thought of 'cloud computing/gaming' terrifies me, and here's why. 97% of our country have ISPs that give us 60 Gigabytes per month of bandwidth for about 60 dollars per month. If there was no alternative to cloud computing, Canadians would be screwed when it comes to usage. Plus, I like being able to know where and what my hardware is and be able to tinker with it.

You think we got it bad? Look south of the border. Their networks are a sad, sad atrocity.

With that in mind, I think the benefits of having the files on disk outweigh the benefits of having a slave computer. Cloud gaming just isn't worth it anywhere else but it's niche.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Plus a lot of people don't have anywhere near fast enough internet for this sort of thing.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

As a Canadian, the thought of 'cloud computing/gaming' terrifies me, and here's why. 97% of our country have ISPs that give us 60 Gigabytes per month of bandwidth for about 60 dollars per month. If there was no alternative to cloud computing, Canadians would be screwed when it comes to usage. Plus, I like being able to know where and what my hardware is and be able to tinker with it.

^This. As a Canadian I had the option of no data cap, but shitty data rates, or vice versa. I get a 175GB a month and normally cut it close. Streaming games would not be an option for me. Also as a PC gamer I like diving into ini files, tweaking the game, and modding it. I didn't spend the money on high end hardware to have it reduced to a super console.

As another Canadian I have to say that we may not be as screwed as you think. Last year Rogers and other ISPs were facing large fines for throttling World Of Warcraft. If cloud gaming caught on, its likely that similar rules would be enforced.