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The suspense, it's killing me. I got L4D2 when it was on sale on steam. It seems they have very large sales as that game in particular was 70% off. Meaning it was only like 2.5$.
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1/2 OT: Valve?s Gabe Newell at 'Casual Connect'
Someone posted this over at the Steam forums. ImHO it's a very interesting read:
On closed versus open platforms
?In order for innovation to happen, a bunch of things that aren?t happening on closed platforms need to occur.
Valve wouldn?t exist today without the PC, or Epic, or Zynga, or Google. They all wouldn?t have existed without the
openness of the platform. There?s a strong tempation to close the platform, because they look at what they can
accomplish when they limit the competitors? access to the platform, and they say ?That?s really exciting.??
?We are looking at the platform and saying, ?We?ve been a free rider, and we?ve been able to benefit from everything
that went into PCs and the Internet, and we have to continue to figure out how there will be open platforms.??On Valve?s interest in Linux
?The big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don?t realize how critical games are in driving
consumer purchasing behavior. ?We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run
on Linux as well. It?s a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.
I think we?ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for
a bunch of people. If that?s true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality.On the evolution of touch
?We think touch is short-term. The mouse and keyboard were stable for 25 years, but I think touch will be
stable for 10 years. Post-touch will be stable for a really long time, longer than 25 years.
?Post touch, depending on how sci-fi you want to get, is a couple of different technologies combined together.
The two problems are input and output. I haven?t had to do any presentations on this because I?m not a
public company, so I don?t have any pretty slides. ?There?s some crazy speculative stuff. This is super nerdy,
and you can tease us years from now, but as it turns out, your tongue is one of the best mechanical systems
to your brain, but it?s disconcerting to have the person sitting next you go blah, blah, blah, blah.
?I don?t think tongue input will happen, but I do think we will have bands on our wrists, and you?ll be doing
something with your hands, which are really expressive.?Comment
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