Kasz216 said:
huaxiong90 said:
Kasz216 said:
huaxiong90 said:
Kasz216 said:
Scoobes said:
Squilliam said:
The way things seem to be going, Steam looks to be as much a gaming platform as any console. Arguably they have one of the soundest business model as they only have to keep people coming back and buying from them and they don't have to worry about things like hardware generations because their customers figure that out for themselves.
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I think Gabe Newell made this point a year or two ago. It's highly profitable for them as they've effectively got the userbase and community of any of the consoles but as you say none of the hardware costs. Furthermore, they receive a fee for being the platform holders and get more profit per sale on each of their first-party software as they're also effectively the retailer and have no packaging costs. And now they're now actually expanding the hardware they're on with Mac and cross platform play via Steamworks.
Valve must be rolling in money...
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And to think they're a private company. That means the owners could be rolling in dough if they want.
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True, but do you really think they'd let someone buy them?
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Why would they need to let someone buy them? Being a private company means they can do whatever they want with their profts since they don't have any shareholders to please.
They can take whatever percentage of the money they want from the company to make a rocket to the moon fueled by cash if they want.
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Could be that I'm tired or that I'm not very educated when it comes to business, but who are you referring to when you say "owners"?
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The people who own the company.
Say I open up a lemonaid stand.
As long as that lemonaid stand is privately owned by me, I can do whatever I want with the money that comes in.
I can hire more people, I can buy better ingridents, I can buy myself a PSP game.
Gabe Newell can basically do whatever he wants with his "lemonaide stand."
He and Mike Harrington founded Valve, and Harrington left. Newell likely owns the entirety of valve and could do whatever he wants with it.
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Ah, okay, gotcha. To be honest, now that I think about it, it was a rhetorical question.
For some reason, at first I thought you meant someone would move in and buy them to get a piece of the pie. But obviously I should've known you wouldn't suggest such a farfetched idea.
