Gabe Newell on PC gaming; Steam Cloud to retain saves and configs across multiple PCs

No PC gaming crisis here

"Is there a crisis in PC gaming?" Newell asked during a presentation. "No. But there is a perception problem."

The reason PC backers say that there is a "perception problem" is partly because most of the time, particularly in North America with the monthly U.S.-only NPD retail reports, people aren't seeing the whole PC gaming picture.

In May, the NPD Group reported that online subscriptions alone generated $1 billion annually.

Newell said that in the next three months, its digital revenue from Valve titles will surpass its retail revenue.

"Only now are organizations such as NPD beginning to track alternative revenue streams (MMO subscriptions, etc.) and discovering billions of previously unacknowledged spending on PC gaming," Newell stated.

And many times, industry watchers focus on only the U.S. and U.K. PC gaming markets, Newell said, although customers in major European markets and emerging markets like China, Korea and Russia are almost solely dedicated to PC, leaving consoles by the wayside.

About PC Gaming Alliance

Asked during a Q&A session why Valve isn't part of the PC Gaming Alliance, he said, "Shipping products is more important than companies sending representatives together to all agree that PC games should be doing better.”

Newell also cited data from the Gartner Group that showed there are over 260 million online PC gamers in the world.

About Steam's new Features, and Steam Cloud

One of Valve's greatest innovations is Steam. Business director Jason Holtman said that Steam adoption is continuing to grow rapidly, with 191 percent year-on-year growth and 1.25 million peak concurrent users. The digital distribution and community platform houses over 300 PC titles from various game makers.

In the "near-future," Valve expects to add significant new features to Steam, including driver auto-updating, a system requirements-checker, new community calendar functions and "official" communities.

Other additions to Steam will be localized pricing (not just USD), recommendations, a shopping cart and more payment methods.

But perhaps the most compelling new feature, as far as convenience is concerned, will be the upcoming ability for users to access not only their Steam games from any PC (which they can do already), but also game-generated data such as saves and configurations, which will be stored transparently in Steam's back-end. This feature, dubbed Steam Cloud, will first be rolled out in existing titles, and will be available for free to both developers and gamers.

http://next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10711&Itemid=2&limit=1&limitstart=0

So, with Steam Cloud, we will be able to play games on different PC's with the same savegames and configs if we wish, hassle free ;)

And Steam grew almost 200% in just 1 one year, yowzers!

I was just about to make a thread called "HELL YES, THANK YOU VALVE!"

Steam Cloud is the best thing ever...I've been wanting my savegames to transfer to other computers or a hard drive format...this is great!

Damn...I may start getting back in to PC gaming. PEople tell me...Does Doom 3 still run like shit these days? :)

I really want favorite servers to transfer. I have a laptop, windows xp desktop, and linux desktop, all with steam installed. It's annoying to have to write down IP addresses in order to make sure I can play at all of my favorite servers with each installation.

edit: the description seems to imply that that will be the case. :) 

Woot! Valve is pure awesomeness.

Sounds like you've been out of it for a while

I remember Doom 3....the game that made everyone buy new video cards

Doom 3 runs just fine on ultra settings with the majority of video cards sold today. (Except for maybe a 8400gs)

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Steam cloud seems like a great thing. I don't know about the rest of it, sounded very much like Newell trying to get free publicity :D Not that he doesn't deserve it.

Ok...Ima get a 9600GT...I have AMD 4400 dual core...1 gig of ram. But from the sound of things Doom 3 is long forgotten and crysis has taken its place as the CPU melter.

A 9600GT should be almost on par with an 8800gt, which is what I have. My processor is similar to yours as well (3800x2 OC'd to 2.5), but I have 2 gigs of RAM. Doom 3 is a breeze at 1080p and Ultra settings on my PC, so you should have no problems there, and you'll be able to play all of the source engine games well enough---

-but you might have problems with Crysis though. My PC has BIG problems with that game on anything but lower settings, in Vista at least. I'll need to try XP again. It'll be a few years before the average computer is able to play it fluently...