Gabe Newell wants to beat Apple out of the living room with the Steam Box
By Jess Colwill on January 31, 2013 at 6:20 pm
The Steam Box is on its way, says Gabe Newell, but its existence is all about doing us a favour, by beating Apple out of the living room, he told a class at the University of Texas’ LBJ School of Public Affairs — and not about Valve trying to beat out the console market. Let me explain.
If Apple finds its way to a living room platform before the PC does, Gaben suggests, they will shut out the open-source creativity and focus on user-generated content that Steam is famous for, and replace it with what he calls a “dumbed down living room platform”.
“The threat right now is that Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway towards entering the living room with their platform,” said Gabe. “I think that there’s a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging — I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily.”
Only adding to his selflessness, he says that Valve are happy to lead the way — mostly because others will follow, and the people will have more choices.
“We’re happy to do it if nobody else will do it, mainly because everybody else will pile on, and people will have a lot of choices, but they’ll have those characteristics. They’ll say, ‘Well, I could buy a console, which assumes I’ll re-buy all my content, have a completely different video system, and, oh, I have a completely different group of friends, apparently. Or I can just extend everything I love about the PC and the internet into the living room.’”
What do you think, noble reader? Gaben definitely has a point about the Apple thing, I think. Will you be buying yourself a Steam Box when the time comes? Or do you prefer your PC gaming in front of your PC, thank you very much? Tell us what you think! Tell us where you stand! Tell us if you think Mr Newell is a prophet or a fool!
Source: Polygon
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It’s a pretty cool idea, especially if it means I can split my steam account across multiple platforms in the same house, so I could be playing Dota on my computer and Saint’s Row in my living room, all off the same steam account but on different boxes.
I will defiantly book looking at getting a steam box:)
Seriously> Gabe Newell for Australian Prime Minister. :)
I prefer gaming in front of my PC… I have 2x 30″ screens which are just fine so I don’t need a TV, there are also only a few games that actually “require” a controller to get good gameplay…
He is right though, Apple in a sense already has some presence in the living room with Apple TV so in a sense Apple is already ahead of the market. If they just add support to be able to play games etc they will attract quite alot of their fanboys.
I’ll be getting one. Be damned if I’m going to buy an Apple Tv, he couldn’t be more right about the ‘dumbed down’ living room experience. You get the same experience from any number of devices as the core experience of Apple Tv, but its presented well, so customers lap that up.
That being said, its mirroring function to Iphones and Ipads is pretty cool.
Well if anyone can do it, it would be Gabe.
i just wanna know what he means be ‘rolls’. when i think of rolled, i think back 16 yrs to when i was 14 yrs old (and younger) getting beaten up by lebanese at parramatta station for my timezone coins. Does he mean apple are bullies and gonna beat up the poor saps at microsoft and sony?
Can’t imagine why I would want a box with presumably inferior hardware, and furthermore be forced to either precariously balance my K+M on the coffee table or gimp myself terribly by trying to play my games with a much more unintuitive (IMO) controller.
Maybe if this thing was literally only like 50 bucks or so I could see the novelty, but at the moment I don’t see any practical implications for me or this household to be honest.
stoibs,
totally agree. 8 hdmi ports might make lans easier though. if it can reproduce 8 copies of the game for each monitor. get a bunch of mates together n buy one between u,
I was under the impression that the biggest selling point will be as an open-source HTPC, so you only need one box to play games, watch tv (without only coming from itunes or select streaming partners > apple absolutely sucks for post-sale freedom of use), and link up to any other computer in the house hassle free.
The current crop of consoles suck for using as HTPC equivalents, hence why a valve console ( +HTPC) would trump them. And making your own HTPC atm is relatively complicated for computer illiterate, and the market would definitely favor a prebuilt standard system.
That opensource console that was recently kickstarted is basically the exact same thing, but im guessing valve will just suck up their market share and force them out, like apple did with all the original mp3 player manufacturers
I know it’s quite different, but surprised there has been little mention of Ouya in the comments/article.
It is trying to do much the same thing that Gabe claims valve are trying to achieve (regarding stopping Apple)
Steambox would be way better, but with any luck Ouya will get a good head start on anything Apple attempts.
revboy1,
Yes!
Apple will likely throw a grid of icons on the TV screen and the world will cry “INNOVATION”. While Gabe has his own agenda, I hope Steam get there before Apple.
I don’t really get it, every time I build a new PC, the old one becomes the dedicated media PC and is attached to the TV. Am I going about things the wrong way?
Except a x360 can do this much cheaper at $150.
The open source console is also android-only as far as I’m aware, so essentially only plays games that have been released on mobile as well.
I’m not sure how Valve are going about it but currently only ONE person can be on a steam account at any given time; are they saying that with a steam box you can have 1 extra person on an account?
I suppose there’d be a market if they allowed it, but currently a raspberry Pi is THE cheapest way to get a HTPC, and an x360 is THE better alternative to a steambox for it as well due to price (I don’t know about you but the HTPCs I mostly see are the ones in larger families with multiple TV rooms) and the fact that setting up windows media centre is trivial, let alone the fact it has resume functionality no matter what room of the house you’re in AND netflix (although netflix requires a separate gold account for each person using it but still).
I don’t see indie devs going out of their way to provide gamepad functionality for this either but I suppose xpadder would negate that point.
Someone correct me on this, but is steam box tied to steam-only games? I sincerely hope it’s not (hell people were pretty annoyed about metro and Apple’s app store, having only games that can be put on steam is begging for it to be a very niche thing) for Valve’s sake (even though I despise many things they do as a company from an ethics perspective).
“I think that there’s a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging — I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily.”
Gaben, sometimes you fool me into thinking you’re quite the idiot. Apparently Apple have a chance of denting the 70 million units sold of the PS3/x360, let alone the Wii (which isn’t used as a media centre anyway by any sane human beings).
Everyone is forgetting that Macintosh is rubbish for gaming, and are not affiliated with gaming. Sure the iPhone can pump out angry birds, but Apple have never been good with the serious gaming market, only casual crap. They will always struggle with games, Valve definitely has found a market to tap into.
To me the Steambox seems to be targetting a niche market inside a niche market. That is unless it does more than offer a HTPC/console feel to it.
Why is logging on to an account a big deal? No other place dose it. So what if you have to keep putting your pass in when you go between them. Thats what you get for using a DRM based on using the interwebs.
People are worried about being locked out of different devices if they share one account, like not being able to game on your pc cause your partner is using the console to watch TV.
coatsy22,
If thats the case i would think that with the steambox, within the UI it would be a “mobile” type of operating system, so your normal pc account is noted as a “pc” account with a linked code, which can only be activated an addition once, I.E you could enter the login on the steambox like.
user4412
password214
“account code section where only one maybe be active per steam box operation”
therefore the pc shouldnt be locked while the steambox version is active, aslong as the steambox user credentials arent being accessed by about 3 consoles. i think 3 should be the max at once for a standard user house if there were to fully intergrate their house with the product. but a gaming family/ university/ lan party could perhaps have an upgrade option on the hosts account to allow more versions to be accessed at the same time.
thats how i see gabes options when it comes to user accessibility
rapid101,
Not true.
Android != mobile phone.
Its an OS and as such H/W developers can be used how they want (within its limits).
In the case of Ouya content developed for it does not have to be usable on a mobile – it isn’t a constraint for the device.
My understanding is that Ouya will have it’s own store front but also be “officially” rootable so you can choose to be locked into the Ouya store, or run anything android compatible (or developed specifically for Ouya but distributed outside the store)
I’m getting one as a cheap XBMC (ouya specific version already announced) with remote included – which happens to also play half decent games.