Why Steam is Awesome, and How You Can Make Live Free

[makingmusic476]

Rainbird said:

makingmusic476 said:

I simply feel it's bad marketing.  How do you get Steam into more people's homes?  Buy selling more games that require Steamworks.  When every major game that requires Steamworks is also on consoles, it does little to expand Steam beyond its current install base.

It'd be like Microsoft releasing Halo on PS3.  Yes, they'll be making another 5 million in sales, but they'll only be hurting their core business in the long run.

This is why I appreciate the Witcher 2.  It seems like it'll be the first real "system seller" for Steam since Half-life 2.

I'm going to go make a wild guess here, but I'm guessing that maybe Valve don't want you to buy into a new platform in order to buy and play their games. They want you to play it on your platform of choice, and they'll do their best to provide the best game they can.

That's why they're bring Steamworks functionality to the PS3 version of Portal 2. So they can make sure PS3 owners get access to the high quality service Valve likes to reply, without requiring you to buy into new hardware. Same reason why they've been nagging about how closed Xbox Live is lately. They can't bring Steam functionality to it, and so their games have to suffer for it.

They don't want you to switch platform, they want to bring their platform to you.

This is true, and I'll be honest, I often forget what a great, pro-consumer company Valve can be, and it muddles my view of how they operate.  They certainly aren't a typical business, something that should've been obvious given the case I've been trying to make this entire thread.

For example, Ameratsu just reminded me on Steam that Valve gave away Portal for free back when they first brought Steam to Mac, in an effort to help grow their userbase. 

Rather than locking games to their platform, they allow gamers to play on whichever platform they choose, meanwhile they promote their own platform by giving away free games.