By Nelson Schneider - 12/16/12 at 02:36 PM CT
Gabe Newell has recently stated to Kotaku that Valve is working on a “Living Room PC.” While the details are sketchy at best, the consensus is that this Living Room PC will compete with 8th Generation consoles in a more direct and in-your-face way than PC gaming ever has done in the past. Based on the things that Gabe, Valve, and Steam have done in the past year, the results could either be amazing or catastrophic.
According to Gabe’s statements, he is both excited about the potential of Steam Big Screen Mode for Linux and anticipating hardware makers to start building and selling PC configurations specifically designed for use in the living room. While PCs configured for use in the living room have been around for years under the moniker of “Home Theater PCs” instead of “Living Room PCs,” Valve specifically wants to build a Living Room PC with a tightly controlled environment. Supposedly, the use of PCs in the living room will provide much more flexibility to consumers than game consoles have.
There is an error in Gabe’s logic, there. Did you catch it?
Tightly controlled PC environments ARE consoles! A computer cannot be “flexible” and “controlled” at the same time. If an operating system is open, allows the user to run whatever software they want on whatever hardware they want, it’s a PC experience. It takes knowledge and technical skill to maintain a system like this. If an operating system is closed, only allowing the user to run signed software on regulated hardware, it’s a console experience. It’s simple and user-friendly. Trying to unify the two is a noble goal, and I am completely supportive of it… except that I’m afraid Valve will go about it the wrong way.
Since Gabe hates Windows 8 and seems obsessed with Steam on Linux, there is a high probability that the Valve Living Room PC will run Linux instead of Windows. This is a perfectly valid operating system choice for a controlled environment. In such an environment the hardware WILL have stable drivers, the software WILL be preconfigured, and it WILL be usable with just a controller: A controlled environment is exactly what is required to tame the savage beast of Linux.
The problem with using Linux in a Valve console/PC hybrid all comes down to software support. While Steamplay is a very consumer-friendly feature of Steam that allows users to buy a game once and play it on any platform that supports it, currently the only platforms that support Steamplay are Windows and Mac OSX. Yes, Valve is successfully in the process of porting their Source Engine to Linux and is working on a next-gen game engine that will be compatible with a swath of platforms, including consoles. But nobody else is doing anything Linux-related outside of Android. As a result, Valve’s Living Room PC could be even more reliant on first-party titles than Nintendo’s hardware has been since 1997.
Let’s say that Valve launches this theoretical Linux-powered Living Room PC. The box runs a fancy Steam frontend that looks just like Big Picture Mode. A user goes into the Steampowered Store to buy games… and finds nothing but Valve’s games.
Half-Life 1 & 2
Counter-Strike
Team Fortress 1 & 2
Left4Dead 1 & 2
Day of Defeat
Ricochet
Portal 1 & 2
Alien Swarm
DOTA2
This short list of titles may include a lot of high-quality and much-beloved games, but none of them are system sellers… they’re too old. Most of these games are available on numerous other platforms than Steam. Where is the compulsion to buy? Nintendo can get away with living and dying by their first party titles because they keep them exclusive to their hardware. Will Valve suddenly cut-off access to their first-party games to everyone using Steam for Windows or Mac? No, that would be silly.
Instead of relying on their first-party library, Valve will have to curry favor with third-party developers in order to convince those third-parties to port their games to Linux. Just a few years ago, this would have been an impossible proposition, as Linux has always had a big, glowing weak point in the form of GPU drivers and OpenGL performance. The smartphone revolution may have inadvertently helped Valve’s bid for a living room presence by refining drivers and graphical performance in Android. If Valve can make their Living Room PC drivers and graphics stack similar enough to Android that Indie developers can compile versions of their games for Windows, iOS, and Android while still providing compatibility with Steam for Linux without actively worrying about it or spending money on it, Valve might be able to get them on-board. The Big Gaming companies that make “AAA” games, however, will be much more difficult to convince, as most of them still ignore any PC OS that is not Windows and create dumbed-down exclusives for the smartphone/web arena instead of ports.
What concerns me the most about Valve’s efforts to break into the living room is the amount of money they will have to spend in order to find success. Valve is not a publicly traded company, so they at least don’t have to worry about keeping stockholders happy. But instead of stockholders, Valve has Steam members to keep happy. Gamers love Steam because it is cheap, convenient, and user friendly. If Valve throws away a lot of money on a failed attempt at a Living Room PC, will the Steam Sales go away? If Valve bets it all on the success of gaming on Linux and their endeavor fails, what will happen to Steam? While the urban legend states that Gabe once said Valve would issue one final update removing all of their DRM if Steam ever went out of business, that is a legend I really don’t want to put to the test.
Comments
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/16/12 at 10:31 PM CT
Valve won't do that... that's what I did with my new "Steambox" gaming PC. Valve will produce one of those small form-factor PCs, like the Alienware X51. Minus a Windows license and with bulk manufacturing, they could get it down into the same range as the PS3's launch price. Of course, the PS3's launch price is STILL a running joke, so whatever Valve does probably won't be enough.
Nick - wrote on 12/16/12 at 08:28 PM CT
If Valve comes out with a "ready-to-go" PC for your living room, what will it cost? $1250 dollars? Do people really want to pay that for something that is going to be used just like a console? That's a pretty expensive console, they'll just buy the next XBox.
