Valve Announces Steambox, Sort Of

wbr1 writes "A new page has appeared over at Steam with this slightly cryptic text, a countdown, and an image of a console controller. 'Last year, we shipped a software feature called Big Picture, a user-interface tailored for televisions and gamepads. This year we've been working on even more ways to connect the dots for customers who want Steam in the living-room. Soon, we'll be adding you to our design process, so that you can help us shape the future of Steam.' It appears Gabe Newell wants to throw his hat in the console ring now with the Xbox One and PS4 about to be released. The countdown to the announcement is targeted at Monday."

Console controller?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

That device is called a "gamepad" and has existed on the PC for years.

Re:They've got a good shot at it

[Alef]

That's one part of the equation; a few big titles is more or less necessary for them to stand a chance at all. But they still need someone to produce the consoles cheaply (if they cost like a gaming PC it'll never compete with XBone or PS4), and that requires volume, which in turn requires a huge initial investment and commitment. I'm not saying it's impossible, and as a Linux user, once a gamer myself I really hope they succeed, but they only way I'd bet on it is if they've managed to attract some of the big players in the hardware industry (e.g. Samsung, LG, Asus, Acer) that might be interested in grabbing piece of the console gaming pie and are willing to chip in some serious resources to do it.

They want my input

[Aboroth]

Soon, we’ll be adding you to our design process, so that you can help us shape the future of Steam.

Oh great, because I have some features I've been wanting for a long time, like being able to sell or trade my games to other accounts, or selectively appearing offline to different contacts on steam, or at least not broadcasting what I'm playing to certain people...

Oh, you don't want that kind of input. You don't really give a shit about what I want.

Well screw you then.

Subject matter

[tepples]

There's no Nintendo GTA5

There's also no Nintendo Katamari, despite the Wii being more powerful than the PS2 on which the series debuted. Perhaps Nintendo just doesn't want the subject matter of GTA5 on its console.

Don't we have enough FPS titles already?

[damn_registrars]

From what I've seen, it seems that >90% of steam titles are various variants of FPS titles. On top of that the top sellers for XBox and PS3 are FPS as well. Eventually the market will hit saturation; we haven't really seen a technological jump in the genre in some time to the best of my understanding. What would Steam sell once the FPS fad is up and people want to play games that involve something other than shootting/stabbing high res people/zombies?