Steam Machines

[Peter Korsten]

You guys probably know that I like gaming, specifically PC gaming. And 
when it comes to PC gaming, there is one name you can't get around: Valve.

Valve is, by a very considerable margin, the coolest company in the 
world. Google try to look cool, but you're their product, not their 
customer. Apple isn't cool, period. Valve is so cool that it could 
easily stop global warming and bring about another ice age.

For example, they have a flat company structure. No managers. Your wage 
is decided by your team mates. And you can roll your desk into a freight 
elevator and join up with another team.

Valve have made some of the best games ever, even though they've only 
made a handful. The Half-life and Portal series are the most famous 
examples. But also the most popular on-line FPS, Counter Strike.

What has made Valve a very wealthy company, however, is Steam. Steam is 
a combined game librarian/launcher/shop. Like the App Store, but it 
actually pre-dates it. And they sell not only their own games, but 
thousands of others, from other producers as well, and taking a cut.

It has meanwhile expanded to other platforms such as the Mac, but 
Windows has the vast majority of content. Not just games: there is also 
non-game software, including a music application.

But there, Valve have a problem. PC sales are ever declining, and at a 
certain point, it will no longer be economically viable to develop big 
games for Windows. Take, for example, Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA V). It is 
rumoured to have cost $250m to develop, but the hit the $1bn mark in 
only _three days_, on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The film that earned 
$1bn three quickest took almost three _weeks_ to do that. So why spend 
extra cash on a PC version, if the market is shrinking?

So Valve came up with the following:

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom

They have three announcements:
* SteamOS
* Steam Machines
* Some fancy controller

SteamOS is a modified Linux. A Steam Machine is a gaming console that 
runs SteamOS. And the controller is, well, weird.

But the whole concept is brilliant. Where Microsoft and Sony opt for 
ever stricter control of their platforms, and trying to grab your money 
left, right and centre, SteamOS is open. You can buy a Steam Machine, 
from any manufacturer, or you can build one yourself. You can play games 
on your Steam Machine, or you can use it to build a killer robot.

If you have an extensive library of games on Steam (like I do), and they 
won't run on your Steam Machine, they will be streamed from your PC. So 
you don't have to throw away your old games, or your gaming rig, and yet 
you're ready for the future.

It really encompasses my philosophy towards development:
* simplicity
* adaptability (in an evolutionary sense)
* compatibility as a nice bonus

Some people were underwhelmed by the announcement. They were perhaps 
expecting Half-life 3, which has been more eagerly anticipated than the 
Second Coming of Christ. But once I've given it some thought, I realised 
how incredibly clever the whole idea is.

It has absolutely nothing to do with music. The reason why I'm sharing 
this, is because it excites me on an intellectual level. And it's been 
quite a while since a computer product managed to do that.

- Peter