Shooting down rumors, Valve not making a gaming console

[X_XSlashX_X]

Delay those dreams of a Steam Box competing with a PlayStation, Xbox or Wii. Valve Software is not making a gaming console in the near future and that the various rumors swirling around don't add up to them making their own set-top box.
"We're prepping the Steam Big Picture Mode UI and getting ready to ship that, so we're building boxes to test that on," Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi said, referring to a new Steam interface that will make the online gaming service easily useable for people who want to play Steam games on a PC that's connected to their TV. "We're also doing a bunch of different experiments with biometric feedback and stuff like that, which we've talked about a fair amount.

"All of that is stuff that we're working on, but it's a long way from Valve shipping any sort of hardware."

Lombardi refused to flat-out say that Valve isn't working on a console. When I posted it to him this way—"What you're saying is, there's definitely nothing coming any time soon, nothing at GDC or E3, but what you're not ruling out is the possibility that, hey, maybe some day Valve would make hardware. "-he said, "I think that's accurate."

Rumors of an impending Steam Box have heated over the last week, since leading tech site The Verge reported that Valve was working on a console that it would develop in partnership with various hardware manufacturers, similar to Google's approach with the Android platform. Some of the evidence cited were patents for configurable controllers and rumors of an incorporation of Valve's public interest in tracking and reacting to player's biometrics into a Steam console. TheVerge report also cited a hardware spec that turned out to match that of a PC built last fall by Valve's Greg Coomer. Could that have been a prototype, we had wondered?

"Greg's one of the guys leading the effort of the Big Picture mode," Lombardi said. "The idea is that you can take Steam to any display. What we're trying to do is say, 'here's a box that we're going to use for testing that's common for Big Picture mode and get performance at a base level.'... We're always putting boxes together. Going all the way back to the Half-Life 1 days, we built special boxes to test our software render… it's just part of development."

http://kotaku.com/5891697/shooting-down-rumors-valve-says-theyre-not-making-a-game-console-any-time-soon

 

[Foxi4]

"All of that is stuff that we're working on, but it's a long way from Valve shipping any sort of hardware."

"We are totally working on a console but we are totally not making a console".

 

[Janthran]

Someone tell them to make Steam for 3DS, though.
Kinda like they did with iOS and stuff.

 

[Rydian]

There's quite a gap between experimenting, and deciding to ship a product.

 

[Foxi4]

There's quite a gap between experimenting, and deciding to ship a product.

You don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars ("God Knows How Much", actually) experimenting with controllers and hardware setups to quit half-way through. You experiment to release a product later-on.

 

[Satangel]

Someone tell them to make Steam for 3DS, though.
Kinda like they did with iOS and stuff.

Yeah sure, Nintendo got such a great reputation with online platforms/services, I'm sure this'll work fine.

 

[Janthran]

Someone tell them to make Steam for 3DS, though.
Kinda like they did with iOS and stuff.

Yeah sure, Nintendo got such a great reputation with online platforms/services, I'm sure this'll work fine.

 

[Foxi4]

Someone tell them to make Steam for 3DS, though.
Kinda like they did with iOS and stuff.

Yeah sure, Nintendo got such a great reputation with online platforms/services, I'm sure this'll work fine.

You can't post static pic's - you'll have to re-upload it somewhere.

 

[schmammal]

I hope they are just lying, companies do this.

 

[Rydian]

There's quite a gap between experimenting, and deciding to ship a product.

You don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars ("God Knows How Much", actually) experimenting with controllers and hardware setups to quit half-way through. You experiment to release a product later-on.

The R part of R&D is often the most expensive part of a company. Companies have been known to sell off subsidiaries just to fund some more R to figure out a product that'll sell well.

I'm not saying they're never going to do this, I'm just getting a little sick of everybody jumping to conclusions across the gaming industry at any little factoid they hear just to write an article.

 

[Foxi4]

There's quite a gap between experimenting, and deciding to ship a product.

You don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars ("God Knows How Much", actually) experimenting with controllers and hardware setups to quit half-way through. You experiment to release a product later-on.

The R part of R&D is often the most expensive part of a company. Companies have been known to sell off subsidiaries just to fund some more R to figure out a product that'll sell well.

I'm not saying they're never going to do this, I'm just getting a little sick of everybody jumping to conclusions across the gaming industry at any little factoid they hear just to write an article.

I don't really give two flips about silly tabloid crap - I'm drawing my conclusions from the few patent pictures I've seen. When you start designing a controller, you probably already have the basic idea what it's going to control. The exception here was the WiiU which puts the controller in the spotlight.

It's not hard to imagine what Valve would want from their machine - it would have to be compatible with Steam and preferably all of its content, so naturally it needs to run a Steam-compatible OS. This leads me to believe that it would run an off-shot version of Windows, much like the XBox did. I don't buy the whole "It will play all PC games!" bull, it doesn't make much sense to me.

Valve has always been a software company, but now they reached a certain level of development where they can afford to perform those experiments, and I can't imagine a scenario where they would "experiment" without having an intention of releasing something in the future. Not the nearby future, by no means, but definatelly an intention.

 

[Rydian]

An intention does not equal confirmation. As an example, Jagex stopped Mechscape after three years of development because they determined it was not a good product.

On the other hand. when companies push through with intentions regardless of what the research shows, you get shit like R.O.B.

 

[Gahars]

It's not that there wasn't a console in the works; there totally was. It just got lost in the void known as "Valve Time" and they've been unable to fish it out.

Get settled in folks; this might take an eternity or two.

 

[FAST6191]

Much as I am loathe to make a one word reply I believe the fitting reply would have to be "sidewinder".

 

[Bladexdsl]

aw no gabecube

 

[Janthran]

Someone tell them to make Steam for 3DS, though.
Kinda like they did with iOS and stuff.

Yeah sure, Nintendo got such a great reputation with online platforms/services, I'm sure this'll work fine.

You can't post static pic's - you'll have to re-upload it somewhere.

What do you mean? The pic is fine.
Now somebody explain the joke.

 

[Foxi4]

Someone tell them to make Steam for 3DS, though.
Kinda like they did with iOS and stuff.

Yeah sure, Nintendo got such a great reputation with online platforms/services, I'm sure this'll work fine.

You can't post static pic's - you'll have to re-upload it somewhere.

What do you mean? The pic is fine.
Now somebody explain the joke.

The pic only shows up if you previously watched it, it's static. Everybody else sees "Posted Image" rather then the picture you wanted to show and following the link will simply redirect to the FunnyJunk main page - hotlinking rarely works y'see.

 

[Veho]

What do you mean? The pic is fine.

It's not loading. You can see it because it's in your browser cache but the rest of us can't see it.

Spoiler

 

[Janthran]

Someone tell them to make Steam for 3DS, though.
Kinda like they did with iOS and stuff.

Yeah sure, Nintendo got such a great reputation with online platforms/services, I'm sure this'll work fine.

You can't post static pic's - you'll have to re-upload it somewhere.

What do you mean? The pic is fine.
Now somebody explain the joke.

The pic only shows up if you previously watched it, it's static. Everybody else sees "Posted Image" rather then the picture you wanted to show and following the link will simply redirect to the FunnyJunk main page - hotlinking rarely works y'see.

Really?
These last 20 or so image replies suddenly seem really dumb. >_

 

[AlanJohn]

My head is trying to imagine "not any time soon" in Valve time.