This is more a shot against MS than Sony. They want to replace Windows for gamers more than they want to replace Xbox, and by going after them while they are relatively weak (after Windows 8) they have a shot.

All they have to do is make Half Life 3 SteamOS exclusive. It worked very well when they made Half Life 2 Steam exclusive.

Im just saying its never a good idea to build a social crutch on something that has an inherently fragile, ephemeral nature.

In the long run I see this push for the cloud biting everyone in the ass.

It's ethereal to us, but it's very tangible to the providers. They host thousands and millions of servers to support their cloud services. I don't think it's going anywhere and there's no real strong reason to be concerned about it other than fear of change, much like the internet at first caused that in people.

Society has been using technology as a crutch rather than as a supplement, I've observed.
Yeah its just another server based side show but eh.


I said ephemeral, transitory, brief, its nascent.

Without physical retail games it wont go farther than the current base of Steam users.

But why?

The digital distribution IS the beauty of Steam! I bet every of the big three this generation will try to push digital distribution of games. The users have gotten the drift with the mobile apps, so they aren't as reluctant to the idea of paying for bytes of data instead of physical disk and box. Hell, Nintendo is already pushing the digital distribution with the wonderful 101, and they will certainly continue to do so. They cut the middle man, and can offer the games at the lower price, without cutting their profit margins. Plus, there is no loss of sales due to second hand market.

Steam is a well developed platform, and while I think they failed with the name of the OS (SOS :P), and by not first making a single hardware solution and then push for variety, if they play their cards right, we might see a new player eating into console sales.

hows anyone gonna buy a steam console when everybody has steam on their PCs?

this is ridiculous

Is this a joke valve ? I don't see anything disruptive about your platforms. What ever you do don't try and leach off the hd twins.

By making it incompatible I suppose?

People that have Steam are already on board with Steam. People that are not are either a) Gamers that know about steam but choose not to use it b) people that dont know about it. People will go to stores and see the Steambox(or in ads), and see that it offers the same games as X1/PS4 but its like your Iphone or droid games.....except the games are much more expensive (slightly less expensive than physical) and you cant resell them towards other games. Oh yeah its missing 60% of the major franchises that you know and love on XB/PS/Wii. Since the system is likely Linux based I would guess the games catalog would be quite thin to start save for indys. I for one hope this fails and hope Steam goes out of business.