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Valve boss says Apple is biggest threat to Steam Box
by Steve Watts, Jan 31, 2013 7:55am PSTAs Microsoft and Sony prepare new consoles and Valve plans its Steam Box (or boxes), it seems everyone is preparing for the three to go head-to-head. Everyone except Valve boss Gabe Newell, at least, who seems unperturbed by either console and more concerned with Apple's movements in the market.
"The threat right now is that Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway towards entering the living room with their platform," Newell told students of the University of Texas' LBJ School of Public Affairs, reported by Polygon. "I think that there's a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging - I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily. The question is can we make enough progress in the PC space to establish ourselves there, and also figure out better ways of addressing mobile before Apple takes over the living room?"
He notes that buying consoles comes with its own set of weaknesses, like requiring you to re-buy content and have a separate friends list for each one, which makes a TV-connected PC more attractive. "I can just extend everything I love about the PC and the internet into the living room," he said. "I think the biggest challenge is that Apple moves on the living room before the PC industry sort of gets its act together."
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Valve founder Gabe Newell believes that the biggest threat facing Steam Box is Apple. He says the question is if the PC industry can get a foothold before Apple "takes over the living room."
Valve founder Gabe Newell believes that the biggest threat facing Steam Box is Apple. He says the question is if the PC industry can get a foothold before Apple "takes over the living room." : Shacknews
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valve are hedging their bets, part of that is the steambox and independence from windows and osx with linux support (which is given the success of android, the bsd relation of bsd/osx to nix/linux hence at this pointz a nobrainer. you can still install windows but the ease of use of ubuntu and other distros with the better gpu driver support lately don't really necessitate that).
if you look at how apple managed to become a relevant player in the handheld place (though playing games on a phone sucks ass and playing on a tablet its only really decent for some specific games) or how mircosoft muscled their way into the console market with what was basically a shitty pc back in the day and their absolute disregard for the pc platform with their games for windows bullshit and other empty promises, you can see how valve would not want to be marginalized as a publisher/distribution platform once win8 hits the market or apple released a tv/console box.
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