Valve Steambox

[Malakili]

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/8/3852144/gabe-newell-interview-steam-box-future-of-gaming

So you're working on your own Steam Box hardware. Why work with so many partners when you have your own ideal design in mind?

What we see is you've got this sort of struggle going on between closed proprietary systems and open systems. We think that there are pluses and minuses to open systems that could make things a little messier, it’s much more like herding cats, so we try to take the pieces where we’re going to add the best value and then encourage other people to do it. So it tends to mean that a lot of people get involved. We’re not imposing a lot of restrictions on people on how they’re getting involved.

We've heard lots of rumors about the Steam Box, including that Valve's own hardware would be "tightly controlled." Can you tell us more about Valve's own hardware effort?

The way we sort of think of it is sort of "Good, Better," or "Best." So, Good are like these very low-cost streaming solutions that you’re going to see that are using Miracast or Grid. I think we’re talking about in-home solutions where you’ve got low latency. "Better" is to have a dedicated CPU and GPU and that’s the one that’s going to be controlled. Not because our goal is to control it; it’s been surprisingly difficult when we say to people "don’t put an optical media drive in there" and they put an optical media drive in there and you’re like "that makes it hotter, that makes it more expensive, and it makes the box bigger." Go ahead. You can always sell the Best box, and those are just whatever those guys want to manufacture. [Valve's position is]: let's build a thing that’s quiet and focuses on high performance and quiet and appropriate form factors.

Looks promising to be honest.  Depending on price point I could see myself potentially getting one of these things.

[Quinton]

...

I suspect most or all of these are going to fail pretty hard. That said I also believe that either Sony or MS is going to fail pretty hard as well. Fails all around!

No doubt about it, a lot of these things are not going to work, or at best remain niche, but I suspect one or two of the less-stupid attempts at taking over the living room content experience may find some momentum.

I also suspect whoever can deliver an inexpensive platform that can deliver TV content to rival CATV/Satellite (as far as shows people want to watch) but delivered over IP will be enormously disruptive.  The cable providers desperately don't want to be dumb pipes, but I think the writing is on the wall and it's only a matter of time -- mostly time to get a suitable set of content business deals done.  That's always been my theory on why Apple hasn't pushed hard on Apple TV yet.

[Simond]

I think one of the Steamboxes will probably do quite well, purely on the grounds of it being a PC-inna-box that you can plug right in to your telly.
Probably whichever one ends up being cheapest.

I also suspect MS throwing some sort of shitfit about it. 

[Furiously]

If it has some DVR capability, I would consider it.

[Kageru]

An impressively mangled Polygon article on a Gabe Newell talk in which he apparently said:

"The biggest challenge, I don't think is from the consoles," Newell said. "I think the biggest challenge is that Apple moves on the living room before the PC industry sort of gets its act together."
...
"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 said. "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?"

Which seems a valid point. Apple has a hugely valuable eco-system but their revenues are getting savaged by the smart-phone and tablet markets getting commoditised. They'll be looking for a new platform or extension of their system and the TV has to be a pretty tempting target. They really do have most of the pieces already if they get serious, though they'd try to keep their intentions a secret until they can drop a "revolutionary" (/cough) and ready to market product to try and build some hype.

[Bunk]

Don't you mean patent a "revolutionary"?

[Fabricated]

An impressively mangled Polygon article on a Gabe Newell talk in which he apparently said:

"The biggest challenge, I don't think is from the consoles," Newell said. "I think the biggest challenge is that Apple moves on the living room before the PC industry sort of gets its act together."
...
"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 said. "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?"

Which seems a valid point. Apple has a hugely valuable eco-system but their revenues are getting savaged by the smart-phone and tablet markets getting commoditised. They'll be looking for a new platform or extension of their system and the TV has to be a pretty tempting target. They really do have most of the pieces already if they get serious, though they'd try to keep their intentions a secret until they can drop a "revolutionary" (/cough) and ready to market product to try and build some hype.

I call horseshit on Apple coming anywhere near "Taking over the living room". They don't know how to make an affordable product. Phones can basically be subsidized by the carriers since they can wrangle you into contracts, and the only market Apple really dominates is the tablet market.

TV Panels are ridiculously cheap due to all the people producing the panels and assembling the TVs fucking slaughtering eachother in a race to the bottom in terms of prices. I'm sure Sony, Toshiba, Visio, etc. are all jerking themselves off however praying that Apple releases a fuck-off expensive gimmick TV so they can jump on the hype bandwagon and sell TVs for extraordinarily high prices again since 3D/204208580hz screens were an abysmal failure at dragging the price points back up.

[Kageru]

The money is in software and content, not making the things. I expect he is more talking about apple doing something like the steambox by pushing the apple TV box up to the next level and integrating it with their other platforms hardware and software. Angry birds on your big screen TV, controlled by your tablet, there's lots of ways the pieces they have could be combined. Though they lost a lot of vision, direction and ability to sell technology at a premium price when they lost Steve Jobs.

[HaemishM]

Apple has been trying to dominate the TV set-top box market (I don't think they'd go after TV's themselves since the margins are SHIT). Apple TV anyone?

It hasn't panned out because they can't or won't get a price point that will make people stop and go "HMMMM." It's not like anything they are offering is better than anyone else, or is FIRST over anyone else - that's been part of the reason behind the success of the iPod, iPhone and iPad. They took over a market early with a product that was head and shoulders above (and most importantly DIFFERENT) than anyone else in the market. The tablet market is getting whittled away as well. The TV set-top box? I'm not sure what they can offer that the other billion products can't. They'd be competing against Tivo and all the cable/satellite provider DVR's, against all the cloud/streaming entertainment services like Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and OnDemand style offerings from cable/satellite providers, as well as PS3, Xbox 360, Roku and other existing markets. What are they going to offer that will crater that niche?

[Fabricated]

The content providers are the largely unbeatable obstacle in Apple's path. You can make wonderful hardware that no one will buy if they can't get the content they want on it for a reasonable price.

And I think the Wii proved the profitability of going for the super-casual gamer console market. After everyone went nuts over the Wii, bought one, and got tired of Wii Sports it became a debacle.

[Pennilenko]

The biggest problem with apple tv is that the content is fucking expensive. It is much cheaper to have cable with an everything subscription than to try to get your five or ten favorite shows through the applestoresoftwarecrap, and that's if the bullshitapplecontentfuckingexpensive store even has what you want. Those fuckers charge per episode.

[Quinton]

$99 for the box isn't bad, but until they can deliver content that rivals basic cable for the price and coverage, the living room is likely to remain unconquered.  I suspect they have a better shot than most to negotiate some kind of content deal, though, but I doubt it'd be trivial to pull off.  I think this needs to be more netflix-ish flat-fee-for-access to make it appeal to most people.  Pay-by-the-episode adds up fast.

[Merusk]

The biggest problem with apple tv is that the content is fucking expensive. It is much cheaper to have cable with an everything subscription than to try to get your five or ten favorite shows through the applestoresoftwarecrap, and that's if the bullshitapplecontentfuckingexpensive store even has what you want. Those fuckers charge per episode.

They charge per episode because the content providers aren't going to cut their own throat and DEMAND they charge per episode.  We were on the road to a real revolution in content pricing before the famous, "Don't give up analog dollars for digital pennies" quote from Zucker.   That was the wake-up call and suddenly Hollywood realized they bought the line that because there were no physical costs they should sell for less.   However they didn't really have to because people would still pay analog dollars for digital content, the price point was already set in the consumers minds and now the providers could pocket the savings.

So now you pay ridiculous prices and they make even MORE money.  It's one of the reasons I refuse to pay for digital anything and still buy physical. Less profit for these fuckers.   (The other big two being you lose right of first sale and the possibility of wiping your collection out with digital is much higher than physical media.)

[Kageru]

Of course they also provide an immense economic advantage to anyone who can break their control. Or encourage people to just opt out of the system they have built altogether.

That said I very much doubt steam will fight this battle. They're not aiming to control the system from the top down or profit from all aspects. They'll try and encourage netflix, youtube and the other streaming services to get involved. And let them feud with the media industry.

[Draegan]

Pay per episodes sounds like paying per hour for internet access.  lol ok.

[MrHat]

The biggest problem with apple tv is that the content is fucking expensive. It is much cheaper to have cable with an everything subscription than to try to get your five or ten favorite shows through the applestoresoftwarecrap, and that's if the bullshitapplecontentfuckingexpensive store even has what you want. Those fuckers charge per episode.

They charge per episode because the content providers aren't going to cut their own throat and DEMAND they charge per episode.  We were on the road to a real revolution in content pricing before the famous, "Don't give up analog dollars for digital pennies" quote from Zucker.   That was the wake-up call and suddenly Hollywood realized they bought the line that because there were no physical costs they should sell for less.   However they didn't really have to because people would still pay analog dollars for digital content, the price point was already set in the consumers minds and now the providers could pocket the savings.

So now you pay ridiculous prices and they make even MORE money.  It's one of the reasons I refuse to pay for digital anything and still buy physical. Less profit for these fuckers.   (The other big two being you lose right of first sale and the possibility of wiping your collection out with digital is much higher than physical media.)

This is exactly right.

Honestly, anything more than .99c an episode or $10 for a season (in HD) is too much.

[Merusk]

Pay per episodes sounds like paying per hour for internet access.  lol ok.

It is. It's also not going away, and paying per hour for Internet access is making a huge comeback.  After all, you own a smartphone, right?

[Teleku]

I had infinite data, I don't know what your talking about.  

(had to give it up for Poland)  


Anyways, I always felt the console market was something Apple could break into and do very well with.  That's the sort of thing right up there alley, and the popularity of the iPhone and iPad for gaming only helps reinforce this.

[KallDrexx]

Steambox may not be a reality after all:

Layoffs at valve

[bhodi]

Gabe N. Released a statement which doesn't say anything except they aren't canceling any projects and aren't talking about why they laid people off.

[Paelos]

Gabe N. Released a statement which doesn't say anything except they aren't canceling any projects and aren't talking about why they laid people off.

Can we make wild guesses?

[Quinton]

Half Life Three: CANCELED!

[schild]

Valve rarely lets people go. This sounds more like a culling of the weak than anything else. They certainly aren't hurting for money.

[apocrypha]

culling of the weak

So, the ones that didn't make it through the Testing Chambers then? 

[MrHat]

Valve rarely lets people go. This sounds more like a culling of the weak than anything else. They certainly aren't hurting for money.

That's the attitude I gleaned from Valve's follow ups on it.

We don't usually talk about personnel matters for a number of reasons. There seems to be an unusual amount of speculation about some recent changes here, so I thought I'd take the unusual step of addressing them. No, we aren't cancelling any projects. No, we aren't changing any priorities or projects we've been discussing. No, this isn't about Steam or Linux or hardware or [insert game name here]. We're not going to discuss why anyone in particular is or isn't working here.

[Teleku]

Yeah, in that talk he just gave at UT, he said you needed to be aggressive about firing people who aren't working out.

[Paelos]

Yeah, in that talk he just gave at UT, he said you needed to be aggressive about firing people who aren't working out.

Which is totally bizarre from the atmosphere they created.

[Der Helm]

Yeah, in that talk he just gave at UT, he said you needed to be aggressive about firing people who aren't working out.

Which is totally bizarre from the atmosphere they created.

If you don't work hard to keep THAT job, you really do not deserve it.

[Kageru]

You can get "fired" without a manager being involved. It would happen when every employee in valve doesn't like you, declines to work with you and doesn't value the work you are doing. At that point the formal firing would be acknowledging something the community has already decided and is acting on. Indeed in the low management model it's probably easier to be fired since you have to keep your peers happy rather than just a manager who is probably somewhat disconnected from the work.

The "no projects cancelled" line basically suggests there's no one reason behind the current firing.

[pants]

Yeah, in that talk he just gave at UT, he said you needed to be aggressive about firing people who aren't working out.

Which is totally bizarre from the atmosphere they created.

No, I think it fits in perfectly.  From what I've seen, Valve is very much in the 'We trust you, go and do something cool and make money'.  For some people, that is brilliant.  But I bet there are a lot of people who that doesn't work for, either because they're slackers, or because they need direction from someone.  And then you add in the requirement as Kageru says of your peers trusting you and respecting you - and I think it fits in perfectly that the model is a huge amount of personal freedom and responsibility, and if someone isn't working out, they cut them as fast as possible, since they don't have a traditional management structure for performance plans and monthly coaching and ultimate responsibility by a person's boss for their wellbeing (at least from a perspective of their output for the company).

[Merusk]

I'd be willing to bet it's a lot more "need direction" than it is "slackers."  Valve doesn't strike me as a company that would get conned in to hiring too many slackers. 

However, given the way education and most jobs work you're not going to encounter a lot of people who can think on their own and create big projects without some greater direction or goal. 

Now tack-on that Valve's total philosophy requires you to work and play nice with people.  In a way that a lot of geeks simply don't have within them.  Sales folk, designers, tradesfolk, sure. I see it in those fields a lot.  From this field all I ever get is, "People suck go away."

So if they can't produce a project on their own AND they can't work within a team I imagine they'll quickly be weeded-out.

[Paelos]

I'm not against firing people for cause. Maybe they were given direction and totally failed.

The whole thing is great for some, but I think it's a minority of the workforce, which is why they try to hire those types of people. If anything, this indicates that either their system wasn't working, or their hiring process wasn't working.

[Pennilenko]

I'm not against firing people for cause. Maybe they were given direction and totally failed.

The whole thing is great for some, but I think it's a minority of the workforce, which is why they try to hire those types of people. If anything, this indicates that either their system wasn't working, or their hiring process wasn't working.

The only think this is indicative of is that in life a system can't be perfect one hundred percent of the time.

[Paelos]

I disagree. I think that's a copout, tbh. If it's one or two people? Sure, nothing is perfect and a few may sneak through.

Up to 25 people? Something needs to be reevaluated. This isn't a huge company with thousands of employees.

[Pennilenko]

I disagree. I think that's a copout, tbh. If it's one or two people? Sure, nothing is perfect and a few may sneak through.

Up to 25 people? Something needs to be reevaluated. This isn't a huge company with thousands of employees.

The 25 number is unconfirmed. Valve is in the range of 300+ employees. I can easily see trimming the fat occasionally if the company needs to pool cash for new projects especially when projects that earn cash are in a lull phase. This i all conjecture though. I still have no issue with Valve's hiring process and chosen management environment. Don't forget about an important factor about people, they change over time. Just because somebody worked well in the structure doesn't mean that they are permanently going to be right for that structure. People change, their lives evolve, their goals change, etc. I imagine that you have to cull people who no longer fit or have been stagnating for a while.