Gabe Newell thinks that Apple may revolutionize the living room aspect of the gaming industry with a new product.
During a game panel at the WTIA TechNW conference, host Ed Fries asked the group if the console business had run its course. As reported earlier, the industry is unsure where the market is heading in regards to the next phase of gaming: will it be consoles, will it be micro-transaction based, cloud-streaming based or will it be a boom on tablets and smartphones?
Nintendo seemingly made the decision with the announcement of the Wii U back in June, and there's talk that both Microsoft and Sony are currently working on their next generation consoles. But Valve Software's Gabe Newell thinks that Apple will shake up the living-room segment of the industry much like it did with the smartphone sector using the iPhone, and creating a whole new breed launching the iPad.
According to Newell, the gaming industry is now divided into four sectors: the Internet, mobile, desktop and the living room. The latter is where Apple is expected to revolutionize, a domain typically ruled by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony.
"I suspect Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people's expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear," he said. Newell added that the new device will "challenge" consoles although he reiterated that he has no knowledge of a new games-based Apple product.
And although he predicts that Apple will eventually rule the living room, Newell is also concerned that taking the closed model is the wrong philosophical approach... an approach that will likely be emulated by others because of the success of Apple and Xbox Live.
"I'm worried that the things that traditionally have been the source of a lot of innovation are going," he said. "There's going to be an attempt to close those off so somebody will say 'I'm tired of competing with Google, I'm tired of competing with Facebook, I'll apply a console model and exclude the competitors I don't like from my world.'"
He went on to rant about Apple's "very closed" system. "Let's say you have a book business and you are charging 5 to 7 percent gross margins," Newell added. "You can't exist in an Apple world because they want 30-percent and they don't care that you only have 7-percent to play with."
Valve Software’s Steam platform isn't quite as restrictive: the company gets a commission if games are sold through Steam, but developers can use the free tools and services to sell their games elsewhere... and Valve doesn't see a single dime. Newell said that if his company did decide to create a hardware platform, it would be open to competing distribution systems because "openness is important to the future of the entertainment industry."
Was that a crack at Microsoft's restrictions with Xbox Live? Newell has been rather outspoken as of late in regards to getting Steam up and running on Microsoft’s Xbox Live network... or rather, notgetting up and running.
"Right now, there's a huge amount of updates and free content we've been able to deliver to people who have The Orange Box that we haven't been able to deliver to the Xbox because of the restrictions that have been placed on us on Xbox Live," he said in an interview back in august. "We'd love to see those relaxed. Other developers on the PS3 are starting to benefit from Sony's more open approach."
"Hopefully that will help Microsoft see that's a good strategy for making customers happy, that the barbarians won't tear down the walls of Xbox and turn it into some chaotic wasteland," he added.
No comments:
Post a Comment