Valve Considers Music and Video Content for Steam; Lombardi Defends PC Platform

PC Variants of a game are just more indepth and have more control. Its that simple.

I'm Glad Valve is such a proponent of PC games. it shows in the quality of their games as well.

Give me lossless music compression that hopefully also doesn't suffer from the loudness war....and I'm in.

Gears of War was successfully marketed for the 360 as a "must have game". I knew people who had literally never heard of the game lining up to get it because Microsoft put it in a nice LE package and that nifty "mad world" commercial.

On the PC, GoW is not a must have game for a few reasons. First off, they did almost no marketing for the PC port. Second, the PC has a lot more choice with regards to FPS choices. Third, it runs on UE3 and a lot of people wanted to see how the game handled before they bought it. Epic did not release a demo, they instead just released the game.

On the PC, Orange Box is a must have game for a few reasons. First, it's a sequel (in more than one way) to existing PC games. Second, it was marketed effectively (not so much on mainstream television, but definitely on websites and other things the PC gamers follow). Third, everyone knew how the game was probably going to run because the Source engine hasn't really posed any problems before.

So a lot of PC gamers decided to hold off on GoW until a demo was released. A demo was not released, so a lot of gamers like myself ignored it.

A lot of PC gamers probably considered pirating the game in lieu of a demo. If you think about it, all console games have demos because of the ability to rent console games at stores like Blockbuster. However, I think a lot of PC gamers did hold off on pirating the game because of the principle of sending the message that if you want PC gamers to buy your new game from an unproven (on the PC) property, you must release a demo. Ironically, had a lot of PC gamers pirated the game to "try" it, the issue would have been piracy. Since it's not, the issue is "low sales"

No, the real issue is that Epic wanted PC gamers to fall in line and buy their game and when they didn't, the cries (again) of "PC Gaming is dead" come up. Or, if you want to get all tinfoil-hat, it could be that Epic would like to abandon the PC and the way to do it is just how they did with GoW. I don't really believe that, I think it's just that Epic is really just mad that their two "surefire" games on the PC weren't surefire at all but GoW at least was on the 360.

This article also mentions very strong sales of Bioshock and CoD4 on steam.

It goes to show that if you make good games on the PC they will sell. Steam seems more and more to be the preferred distribution method of PC gamers as well. This more or less confirms what many people have been saying NPD data for the PC is useless for many games.

I'm sure consoles are more profitable by and large but success on the PC is obviously not a fantasy.

Good games sell on PC.

Gamasutra has released their weekly best selling list across all platforms. On the PC:

1. Sins of a Solar Empire (Stardock) !!
2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision)
3. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (Blizzard)
4. The Orange Box (EA Games),
5. SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition (EA Games).

the current video player system on steam can eat my butt. really, you dont have to change my screen resolution. i promise.

on the other hand, i like the idea of more stuff available on steam. the more options the better.

insert generic pc vs console flames

My 360 RROD'd for the second time last week. I called MS and they are sending me another box to return it in. I was told now that it will take 4-6 weeks to be repaired.

I have a Wii, but I mainly use that for when the GF is tired of CS:S or WoW, or when I have my kids.

My PC, however has always remained my main gaming apparatus because it never seems to have these issues. Sure it may cost more, but if I factor in most games -$10 price difference, and the free MP (fuck XBL gold), and the ease of moving games from one PC to another when i upgrade, and the superior graphics...it tends to even out a little more. I like customizing my keys. I dont want to use presets. I want to play at 1680x1050 or higher. I want low loading times. I want mods, and free multiplayer, and a community that is like minded and FREE.

Not many offerings there as far as consoles go...ps3 is nice because its free, but its new, so who knows. Wii is almost non existent, and you know how I feel about XBL.

I can play Wolfenstein on my Vista box. I can play Orange Box with everything turned on, and have a blast. I can play Crysis at a reasonable eyecandy rate. As far as backwards compatibility goes, PC's have the upper hand. I hope we see more companies push PC gaming alot harder than they have been.

Steam and digital distribution is great but you can't beat getting a good deal on retail. I bought the Orange box from Amazon when the price dropped (temporarily) to $30. On steam the lowest it has ever gone was $38.something. If they want to compete with Retail they need to have more specials etc. Prices for digitally distributed content is very static compared to retail. Just my 2 cents

The raging Shack collective hard on for Valve Software is throbbing more than ever. It's stories like these that allow for such boneritis.

Shit, I'm gonna have to buy a new hard drive just to put Steam on.

Go Valve Go!

Honestly, music and videos seems too soon for Steam. They need to focus on their core and build a solid foundation with a bigger library of games and an even better community. The Steam Community is nice, but it could use some work too.

I'm glad someone came to the PCs defense. I mean, yeah consoles are good and everything, but this death-talk for the PC just gets under my skin, even if there are truths to it.

I would totally prefer Steam over iTunes & Live. Even more if they integrated an MP3 player into the Valve games like they did with the communitystuff.

Hopefully there will be no DRM on purchased music, they're going to need that if they want to compete with Amazon and iTunes. But now that I think about it a subscription based service might actually work for them. I wouldn't normally consider it but since I already have Steam for games, why not?

I'd have to imagine they'd need a pretty large interface overhaul to include those sort of things. It reallly needs it anyway, especially the store search function.