It's an emergency escape hatch.
Seriously. It's an act of desperation, not an act of aggression. The PC market dropped 10% this year, and that means Valve's growth is cut off unless it can bust free of the PC. While most of Valve's customers are upmarket enthusiasts, they'll only go so far without new blood coming in.
It'll be quite a trick if Valve can pull it off. They're asking OEM partners to go up against a bunch of console manufacturers who enjoy better scale and still dump hardware below cost, while they ask software publishers to offer a console experience that undercuts their prices on established console platforms.
I don't see how the OEMs can compete, and I don't know why the publishers would compete with themselves.
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
