Valve Says Apple is Biggest Threat to Steam Box

[gm0n3y]

I just don't understand how iOS could affect the gaming industry. The games on cell phones are mostly terrible and even the decent ones are more like the solitaire and mindsweeper of the gaming world. If anything, they get people that don't traditionally game to play a few mini games, but 'real' gamers will stick to full featured games.

 

[techinator9000]

What he actually meant was that Apple was the most likely to sue them over some obscure patent or 3. Perhaps the steam box might have corners that are a bit too rounded, or maybe the on-screen icons will bounce-back too much.

 

[Soda-88]

Last 5 or so statements from Gaben made me think he's either on drugs or simply lost it.

 

[Fulgurant]

[citation][nom]capt_taco[/nom]Yeah no. I think you can start to take Apple seriously at exactly the same time they stop making products that are the same as everyone else's but double the price. Also when they stop putting their devices on lockdown and micromanaging what you can do with them. Until then, they can have fun with their 10% market share composed of non-gamers who are attracted to shiny things.[/citation]

Yeah, my first thought when I read this article echoes yours. I actually kinda hope that Apple tries to enter the console/home gaming sector, because then the average consumer might come to understand just how overpriced Apple's products are. It's one thing to make qualitative comparisons -- which OS/phone/tablet feels nicer to use; it's another thing entirely to look at stark performance differences.

Apple has thrived in areas where there really isn't any critical eye aimed at evaluating hardware performance. Maybe Apple will be dumb enough to crash headlong into an area where the general consumer can't ignore hardware performance.

Should be interesting to watch, in any case.

 

[Fulgurant]

[citation][nom]Usersname[/nom]People said the same thing about PC gamers not transferring to Consoles but they did in their millions. BTW I play Far Cry 3 with Ultra settings on my MacPro with GTX 680. It's every bit as good as my PC gaming rig only I can boot into a better OS whenever I want.[/citation]

Congrats; you bought top-of-the-line PC hardware, and -- surprise, surprise -- top-of-the-line PC hardware runs well.

You probably could have built yourself a hackintosh for half the price, though.

 

[ericburnby]

[citation][nom]capt_taco[/nom]Yeah no. I think you can start to take Apple seriously at exactly the same time they stop making products that are the same as everyone else's but double the price. Also when they stop putting their devices on lockdown and micromanaging what you can do with them. Until then, they can have fun with their 10% market share composed of non-gamers who are attracted to shiny things.[/citation]
Please show me an Ultrabook that's half the price of a MacBook.

Please show me a tablet half the price of an iPad 4 that has a screen as good and processing power to match.

Please show me a smartphone for half the price of an iPhone 5 that's just as good.

I'll be here patiently waiting.

 

[wemakeourfuture]

[citation][nom]house70[/nom]Living room gaming has traditionally been console gaming. No serious console gamer is going to put down their controllers for anything Apple. There is no serious gamer out there (console or otherwise) that uses Apple hardware for that purpose. Any gamer that sees that Apple hardware gets in the way of his/her gaming will just avoid buying it and choose something else instead.IMO, if Apple wants a big chunk of the "living-room business" they'll have to open up their closed ecosystem to accommodate the existing players; otherwise, people will choose something they can actually use.[/citation]

Same way Microsoft opens up their closes system? Or Sony?
Its not about Open or Close, its about the products and people's preference. iOS type games will cater to casual gamers like the Wii, there's a space for that, but remember how people thought "hardcore gamers won't want to use a phone to play games."

Now you're seeing Nintendo and Sony's handheld gaming devices fading to extinction because there is not enough people buying their handheld units for them to make money.

 

[demonhorde665]

Usually I agree with a prediction from newell, but apple ? are you serious , they already tried their ahnd in the living back in the 90's (the pippin) and see how that went ? apple being a threat to gaming consoles is as likely to happen as me farting on glass to break it and suceeding. it's a laughable joke , he cant be serious.

 

[dons20]

Pssh Macs are not really made for gaming at all. Sure they look nice but so does linux. Linux is one OS that can look almost exactly like a Mac and run on terrible hardware...Let's face it, Windows has taken the gaming market and it will be hard to break that choke hold they have on the market for a while...the Steam Box will have some promise though I am sure.

 

[Fulgurant]

Same way Microsoft opens up their closes system? Or Sony?
Its not about Open or Close, its about the products and people's preference. iOS type games will cater to casual gamers like the Wii, there's a space for that, but remember how people thought "hardcore gamers won't want to use a phone to play games."

Now you're seeing Nintendo and Sony's handheld gaming devices fading to extinction because there is not enough people buying their handheld units for them to make money.

Sony is comparable to Apple in the sense that they've overreached in the past with closed systems (Beta Max, anyone?). Microsoft might like to have an Apple-esque propriety eco-system (and they're arguably reaching for it with Windows 8 and their App store), but Microsoft is watched far more carefully because it owns so much of the OS market.

What bugs me about Apple's insistence on proprietary eco-systems -- and they've done it forever; it's only in the last decade or so that Apple's achieved major success with that model) -- what bugs me is the presumption in the culture that Apple is the hipper, nice-guy alternative to the big bad corporate IBM/Microsoft machine. Pernicious marketing at its finest: Apple is every bit as greedy and grasping as any other corporation, and as a practical matter Apple is often significantly worse.

In any case, say what you will about the ubiquity of Windows in the desktop PC marketplace; Windows is an open ecosystem, at least as of this moment. You can run Windows on basically any hardware, and you can run basically any program on Windows. That's why it's always kicked the crap out of Apple's OS, no matter what cutesy UI advantages Apple could tout at any given time.

You're right that tablets and phones are squeezing the handheld console out of existence, but that's only natural: the tablet and the smart phone offer essentially everything a handheld console ever did, and they offer a lot more besides. It remains to be seen whether Apple can offer a competitive product in the console market. Hell, whether Apple maintains its primacy in the tablet market remains to be seen.

 

[cats_Paw]

If anything, apple is loosing ground in general, not winning it. And this is due to treating consumers like dumb kids, and not like inteligent adults.
I dont see apple change their ways, so i dont think they are such a threat.

 

[cmi86]

Well my PC has been "in the living room" since 2005 running my entire media and entertainment system. From viewing cable TV to hardcore games music, pictures, web browsing and everything in between. My home entertainment has been PC based for almost a decade so why are these pre-mfg junk boxes becoming all the rage all of a sudden ?

 

[urbanman2004]

Why the hell would anybody trade out their conventional form of gaming for Apple's i-for-Idiot-OS hardware.

 

[cabriovw]

This is EXACTLY what iv'e been waiting for!
To spend $2000 and a TV for my 3 year old to play Farm Frenzy! LOL thank God I'm not an APPLE disciple.

 

[cabriovw]

Spooderman , February 7, 2013 7:22 PM
ericburnbyPlease show me an Ultrabook that's half the price of a MacBook.Please show me a tablet half the price of an iPad 4 that has a screen as good and processing power to match.Please show me a smartphone for half the price of an iPhone 5 that's just as good.I'll be here patiently waiting.

YOUR statement makes no sense! If you can see all the hardware out there that's better is because YOU don't want to believe it. Brain washed IDIOTS!

 

[stevejnb]

And both Sony and MS said they weren't competing against Nintendo last gen as Nintendo trounced them for the first five years of the generation. Apple says AMOLED displays suck, etc etc... These companies BS all the time, saying things like this as a buffer for failure to compete against something that obviously has a segment of the market they want.