Valve's console

[lazyfatbum]

The Steam box is basically a nice PC for the living room, it's not just Valve's games or Steam that is going to guarantee it success. Oh no, you'd like to think to that. It's digital distribution. Remember that terminology? 7 years ago we thought it was going to alter the orbit of earth and all we saw was back-cat games. Well, enter Valve and its proposal: High end HD machine more powerful than a locomotive, tall buildings etc Packed with Steam, a large hard drive and no physical media. Now I get their angle.

Once this hits (if it hits), its going to make ripples in to waves and give the big 3 a dose of modern change and awkward transitional periods. Most gamers would love a set-top, pick-up and play, all the games loaded on the HDD console with an instant, completely free open network of about 11 Madeuptillian people. So...

I'm putting in my two cents now that this rumored console will usher in a swarm of medialess changes and possibly destroy the entire earth.

Also the controller may have a trackball lol.

[Great Rumbler]

Official word from Valve is that they have no intention of releasing their own hardware.

[A Black Falcon]

I think they said "at this time", GR, not "ever". I bet they'll do something like this eventually.

[Dark Jaguar]

Penny Arcade's new news report lists a few convincing reasons why they think this won't be happening any time soon.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial...xbox-rumor

Heck, even with Steam I find myself getting a lot of games in disk form still.

[A Black Falcon]

I think they're entirely right, but that doesn't mean that some company isn't going to be stupid enough to buy into all of the DD hype that's out there right now and try it anyway. Maybe Valve isn't that company, but I would not at all be surprised to see it happen (like, the current Microsoft rumors say that it'll have no disc drive. I don't believe that, cards cost far too much and downloads are far too slow for big games, but I can't underestimate these companies ability to do stupid things...)

I just hope that whoever does it doesn't succeed with it. But yes, Penny Arcade has a good list of reasons why this wouldn't work in a lot of places anyway.

[Great Rumbler]

Steam [and some other DD services] do have such a thing called "preloading" where you can load almost all a game's files BEFORE it's actually released.

[A Black Falcon]

Do you really think that that fixes all of the issues raised in that article? Really? Then you need to read it again...