Just read this article and it made me think that there’s a big problem with Valve’s approach, perfectly resumed in one sentence from a comment:
We will need to have a computer for doing everything else and a SteamBox to play, fragmenting even more the gaming ecosystem.
Which ruins Newell’s argument about making SteamOS an open platform: for people, it’s another silo to deal with.
I can do everything I want on my laptop, like a lot of people. It’s very convenient. Through the past decade we’ve all been going back and forth on using tools that do multiple things at a time and some that just do one thing. To each his own (yes, I still use a small mp3 player with its 22 hours of battery life).
For games though, I think the tendency is to have one machine that does games AND other stuff. Consoles went this way. Tablets too, as PCs always have been. We are in the “good enough” for most people, dedicated machines are for a core audience. Steam is trying to sell software and movies too, trying to widen so maybe they want to compete directly with all the big ones who have larger pockets, already acquired users, traction, devices etc. Good luck.
Steam, as a cool digital store was fine. A lot could be done to make it less “brogamer” and a perfect destination for more casual gamers, going more experimental, hosting game jam games etc.
If I was Dell or Lenovo or Acer, I’d jump on the opportunity to make those sweet living room PCs though. The PC market is vaguely shrinking because these guys don’t innovate at all or do blindly. It’s sad to see.
I guess that’s why Valve started this Steam Invasion.