A Message From Valve's Gabe Newell

[Kamikaze]

10 days or so to ponder...

Nothing to add, but - indeed!
Hope you can get some answers Michael!

[Michael]

10 days or so to ponder...

[Kamikaze]

More and more the rumours point to a console/hardware device being created by Valve. IMHO it makes business sense for the drive for Linux steam and source engine to come from this push. Even though the majority of the games available for Steam are only MS Windows compatible, maybe they'll surprise us with something for the long term.

It almost seems a bit "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"...

[sado1]

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/13/valve-job-posting-reveals-plans-for-homegrown-hardware-promises/

hm.

[boast]

maybe valve can post it on kickstarter.com

[entropy]

Many people I know spend most of their gaming time in 1-3 games (css, wow, dota). Some of them said directly that if those were available they'd switch the same day.

Extrapolating, I'd say they don't need their entire back catalog. Just the most wanted ones, and that's enough for many to switch.

Maybe... But is it worth the effort for Valve?

I'd really like this to become reality. Steam and Source on Linux would be wonderful.
Additionally, the distribution platform may be an incentive for other publishers to release Linux ports.

On the other hand, this also comes with a very high danger IMHO.
"If" Valve fails with Steam on Linux (for whatever reason), my bet is that this would be the death
blow for AAA gaming on Linux and nothing great like this will ever emerge again in the future.

But ofcourse, someone has to try first...
Let's hope that it'll be a great success!

[curaga]

Now, wouldn't a Steam console make most sense when Valve is able to use the entire Steam (back) catalogue?
Sadly, I fail to see how that is possible with a Linux-based system.

Many people I know spend most of their gaming time in 1-3 games (css, wow, dota). Some of them said directly that if those were available they'd switch the same day.

Extrapolating, I'd say they don't need their entire back catalog. Just the most wanted ones, and that's enough for many to switch.

[storma]

Dunno, I can't say I've ever heard someone say "If only Mac had this feature, I'ld switch over". Even with steam coming to Mac, did anybody change OS? This is a different situation with Linux, there are people waiting to make the switch.

[TripChoco]

If you look at wikimedia's stats, the amount of linux and mac users seems to be relatively on par. The "1%" commonly quoted is from a paid stat counting company having customers such as microsoft.com.

In any case, my point is that quite a couple of the steam games, e.g. world of goo already have linux ports. If they add a linux client, those that ported their games to linux (which especially amongst indie developers is getting more and more common) will already be available for their steambox.

Yeah, mac doesn't have a ton of games, but it has quite a couple. It just seems like a good idea to have ported and ready games available in addition to the ones they will inevitably get if they do make a console.

[mememe]

Maybe that's why they're porting steam to linux to begin with? Wait it out, let people release their linux ports to steam so they may have a decent backlog by the time the steambox is ready

Yeah, because that's going to happen when Steam is ported to Linux. Just look at the Mac, it has a Steam client but few games (at least in comparison with Windows) and there are 10 times as many Mac users with an even higher number of potential buyers. They can create the Steambox, give a few interested developers a couple of months to port their games to it and entirely disregard Linux on the PC anyway.