[opendtv] Valve's Newell: How PCs Will Take Over the Living Room

  • From: "TLM" <TLM@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "Opendtv" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2013 15:08:15 -0800

I am not taking any sides here (I still like my cable for now, and maybe
will add a PC someday) but I thought this would provide food for thought:

Valve's Newell: How PCs Will Take Over the Living Room

 

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2013/02/Gabe_Newell-660x440.jpg 

 

<img
src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2013/02/Gabe_Newell-660x440.
jpg" alt="" title="Gabe_Newell" width="660" height="440" class="size-large
wp-image-53883" />

 

 

Gabe Newell speaks at the DICE Summit on Wednesday. On Thursday, he
delivered another address focusing on Valve's ambitions to change the
living-room gaming paradigm. Photo: AIAS

LAS VEGAS - At the DICE Summit on Thursday, Valve CEO Gabe Newell laid out
his vision for how the PC, as a gaming platform, can move into the living
room.

"Traditionally, people say nobody wants a PC in the living room," Newell
said. But he sees that changing soon, and pointed to a "good/better/best"
scenario in which different users will have different solutions for playing
PC games on their television.

"Good," he said, is "home streaming" - devices like Nvidia's Shield that
stream games from your PC to a mobile screen. "Think of it as, your PC now
has an extra monitor and an extra set of inputs," Newell said. "The price
point is going to be much, much lower than what we've traditionally seen in
living-room devices."

Streaming setups like this, he said, "do require [game creators] to do some
work to ensure the customer experience is seamless."

"Better" is a "PC in a console form factor at a console price point," or
what has become colloquially known as a Steam box. "Nowadays, making small,
quiet, cool PCs is a well-solved problem by multiple vendors," Newell said. 

"We're developing console form-factor PCs, and working with partners on that
as well," he said, devices that have "all the characteristics of a great
console device while taking advantage of the price performance of a PC."

"Best," Newell said, is "pretty straightforward." If you want a $4,000
living-room PC with all the bells and whistles, he said, there are plenty of
vendors who will provide that.

Newell stressed the need for free and open platforms like Linux. "Our
company wouldn't exist if it weren't for the openness of the PC. Steam
wouldn't exist if not for the openness of the Internet," Newell said, noting
that he sees Linux as a "get out of jail free pass for our industry, if we
need it."

He also restated his
<http://www.polygon.com/2013/1/30/3934112/gabe-newell-steam-boxs-biggest-thr
eat-isnt-consoles-its-apple> previous assertion that Apple is "more
threatening to the PC in the living room than anything that would be
happening on the console side," noting that the company has a "natural
progression into the living room."

Newell said he sees PCs in the living room as a way of ending "disruptive
console transitions."

"You don't have to say, oh my god, how are we going to get that application
running on our dedicated hardware in the living room?" he said.

JPEG image

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