Valve's Big Picture Could Be a Linux Game Console 272
Penurious Penguin writes that "a hopeful article at The Verge persuasively suggests that through Valve, Linux could soon become a formidable contender in the gaming arena, capable of holding its own against such giants as Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and the Wii. With 50 million users, a growing Linux team, a caboodle of interesting experiments ('Steam Box' hardware baselines, etc.) and a strong conviction that more-open platforms are the way, Valve may actually see it through."
Piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, perfectly serious question, and one the game developers and studios are going to ask you: How are you going to protect against piracy if the platform is open? Explain how if it's made trivially-easy for people to download and pirate the games, how their revenue stream benefits from this... because open platforms encourage piracy. Or at least, that's the argument that's going to be made.
Please guys, serious answers only, not a giant flag of a penguin and patriotic music playing while you explain in great detail why open is better, etc. Pretend I'm a game developer and sell me on the concept. You can start by telling me how it'll be at least as profitable, if not more so, than the competitors. I don't care about linux, or the GPL, or open source: I want a business case made.
An old dream (Score:5, Interesting)
For years I dreamed about a Linux distro with all the fat out but the bare minimum to run games, so we can get all the power from the hardware. I really hope this can become real but I`m well aware of the hurdles they will face to get to that.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
"Troll"? EXCUSE ME? (Score:3, Interesting)
How is it trolling to ask a question that any developer who's going to give serious consideration to this platform is going to ask? The console market thrives mostly on store-bought purchases, many of which are recycled into the used-games market a year after their release, but 95% of the games aren't pirated. The PC gaming market, on the other hand, is almost the exact opposite: Most games, especially single-player games, sitting on PCs are pirated. So to get the same profit, you'd have to sell games for this console either at about 20 times the volume or 20 times the profit margin, to make up the difference.
This is math guys. It's business. I'm making no arguments as to technical feasibility of producing such a console, but one of the reasons for the success of the PS3 and one reason so many developed for it was because it had strong DRM: If you wanted to play a game on the PS3, you either had to buy it, or go through convoluted steps or modify the hardware in ways that often left you unable to use that console online for multiplayer games. Every console marketed in the last decade has tried to follow the same business model.
Now you have Valve coming along with a new, untested, business model. The burden of proving feasibility is on them; And I really, truly, and sincerely want to know what their argument is either for limiting piracy on their platform or describing how it won't affect sales or the profitability of games developed for the console. It is not trolling to point out a legitimate concern about an untested and unproven business model in an industry where game development costs many millions and the industry itself is prone to failure. Look at the (very) long list of failed games and gaming companies. Entertainment is a risky business.
So the question has to be answered, solidly, how those risks are mitigated. Not. A. Troll.
Re:Piracy (Score:4, Interesting)
Steam is already on Windows and that can be considered 'open' too, since you are referencing console lockdown. It is not perfect but it seems to be working well enough.
The market is a lot bigger; The piracy rate is higher, but so is the purchase rate, so it evens out. But consoles are a small market -- almost everyone owns a computer. Not nearly as many own consoles. If the piracy rate on a console was the same as the PC, the market would collapse; it would be very difficult for all but the most successful titles to get a return on investment.
Unlikely (Score:5, Interesting)
Now is probably the best time that Valve could release a console: get first mover status in North America against MS & Sony and probably Europe as well. But valve is a software company. Their experience with manufacturing, shipping, retailers, etc is limited at best. The boxed copies of Valve games are published by one of the traditional large publishers. I love valve as much as the next fan boy but the massive operational organization that is needed to support a console launch is slightly outside of their reach. Valve could partner with a distribution/manufacturing partner but the people that have experience in the entertainment space and who would be able to accomplish the undertaking is a pretty short list. EA could probably swing it and would scare both MS & Sony as their consoles would lose EA's games but with origin vs steam on the PC side of things I see this as slightly unlikely. I'd love Sega to make a Steam box, but that's simply nostalgia talking. Sony is the most likely partner as steam is already on PS3 (for some definition of steam) and ps3 runs a version of unix, but it would probably be another wedge between Sony & retail stores.
More then likely this is probably valve's experimentation into console space. They'll probably stream line it so that it's trivial to get your home linux machine to output to hdmi at the push of a controller button. Once the home experience is as simple as it can get then they'll make a business case for releasing their own console or not based upon revenue. Look at what valve has done with micro-transactions, free to play games, crowd sourcing, and non-game software: they dip a toe into the water and then once they're confident they move into that space.
Of course Steam wants this (Score:4, Interesting)
Joel Spolsky coined the term "Commoditize your complements" ten years ago. [joelonsoftware.com] Steam, who sells software, wants consoles (or PCs acting as consoles) to be as cheap as possible, so as many people as possible can afford to have hardware that will run their games.
Every product in the marketplace has substitutes and complements. A substitute is another product you might buy if the first product is too expensive. Chicken is a substitute for beef. If you're a chicken farmer and the price of beef goes up, the people will want more chicken, and you will sell more.
A complement is a product that you usually buy together with another product. Gas and cars are complements. Computer hardware is a classic complement of computer operating systems...
All else being equal, demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease... why don't the video chip vendors of the world try to commoditize the games, somehow? That' s a lot harder. If the game Halo is selling like crazy, it doesn't really have any substitutes. You're not going to go to the movie theatre to see Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and decide instead that you would be satisfied with a Woody Allen movie. They may both be great movies, but they're not perfect substitutes. Now: who would you rather be, a game publisher or a video chip vendor?
Now that the cheapest hardware out there is ridiculously capable, of course Steam wants you to throw a free OS on there and turn it into a Steam appliance. Which can also browse the web, play videos, send emails, make Skype calls, etc etc etc.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good news for Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft doesn't have to deliver a great solution, just something good enough that Windows users don't look for alternatives. That's the advantage you have when your solution is included with every install of the OS and your OS is a monopoly in its market.
The question will be if Steam and other stores have enough of a following to do what Netscape could not and ride out the anti-competitive maneuvers MSFT will make.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't quite see, on a dedicated Linux system, how running anything in the kernel will improve things. The code still executes on the same CPU, same caches, etc. If the kernel includes broken drivers that disable interrupts for a long time (like the utter garbage USB device drivers for Raspberry PI), then whether you're in the kernel or outside, low latencies go out the window. As long as you don't include drivers written by people who have no clue, you'll be perfectly fine in the userland. Especially if you're the only process running at that time. I'm prototyping some rather low-end userspace PLC systems, and the userland performance is quite phenomenal if you're the sole process and are only using Ethernet communications (no USB). You can easily run cyclic tasks at 10kHz, and it's rock solid in performance.
[Rant: No USB device driver has to block on anything. Ever. No exceptions. If you think otherwise, you're dumb, and I mean it.]