Apple and Valve teaming up for a new console?

That's what this article claims:

Apple has its fingers in a lot of pies these days.

The Roku 2 XS streaming media player includes a motion sensing remote, for motion games, "as well as game-ready buttons to support furious button action". It has app store type games, playable with the remote, and comes with the ubiquitous Angry Birds. They have their own little app store for getting more games. The whole thing costs under a hundred bucks. With Jobs out of the way, it wouldn't surprise me if Apple wanted to start expanding their game playing business, and the more apps they can sell in more place, the more money to fill their swimming pools. Where Valve comes into all this, I'm not really sure.

The amazing part about the Roku player is that they just added this game playing feature with motion controls, and it's almost not even news.
http://www.amazon.com/Roku-XS-1080p...PP84/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334625572&sr=8-1

As a person who is constantly frustrated by the dearth of Steam games available on the Mac, I greet this rumor with a hearty chuckle.

I was hoping Steam would push for a standard PC with locked Win7 or Win8 OS as a "Steam Console".

I could see this being more in the vein of Apple wanting Steam on their new device (new TV, or Apple TV or whatever) with Steamworks support for their API. I don't see Valve getting into the hardware game either but I can see them teaming up with hardware manufactures to get Steam on those devices.

As was implied above Jobs seemed to have a disdain for video games and iOS becoming such a huge gaming platform was somewhat in spite of Jobs. Cook might be more game friendly, which seems like it would be smart move as games make a ton of money for Apple on the App Store.

When you get right down to it, Steam is an app store. Perhaps Apple wants to do something with them regarding the Mac appstore, bringing more games and software to OSX in a one click package.

This is about reality augmentation glasses. Sorta like what Google was talking about. It's the next iPad.

No, I'm not shitting. People inside Valve have discussed it openly already.

Valve Goggles and the "Big Picture", Steam on your TV:

Maybe I should have made a new thread. There's no Apple mention in the NYT article or anything I've seen about the TV UI for Steam.

When was Apple ever in the console game?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin

Huh. Never heard of it.

Maybe that's why.

I looked around to see if there was a thread on the news. Guess this'll do.

Looks like they're confirming it, possibly for 2013. No Apple, so far as I can tell.

I would strongly consider buying one of these things if the price is right, but it sounds like it won't be upgradeable so that seems like kind of a non-starter.

I'm not sure I quite get this. The point of a console is that you tightly control the production cost to lose the least amount of money on the hardware and then make it back on software. The reason you can close the loop is because you license a dev kit and control which games get released. You guarantee that any game released for the console is able to be played in a reasonable manner.

But the flexibility of Steam has been that they can distribute any PC game at all and it's up to the buyer to know whether it's going to work on their PC.

I suppose they can add a "Certified for Steambox Mk 1" badge on software that they know will work but that would seem likely to generate frustration when a game finally comes out that *won't* run acceptably on the box.

I guess we'll have to wait and see how they handle this.

Steam and the Apple app store are mortal enemies, NO WAY KNOWN would apple ever be letting Steam into anything they do, particularly not if they are working on the oft rumoured Apple TV.

The current console cycle looks like it's going to have lasted 8 years. A Steam Box isn't going to last 8 years and still play new games.

So...why would you buy this thing if you're going to be running in gimped mode in a few years? Why not just buy a console, which would be better supported by developers based on install base?

I think the real advantage they have with this product is the existing flexibility in the PC market. I'm thinking about this in the frame of the console market, when I should be thinking about it in Apple terms. If these guys release a superior product at launch with a not-too-crazy (say, $600?) price tag, and market it as a premium item, they could sell decently. Next year, put out a new one. Same price, better graphics card, better processor, etc. Next year, do it again. Which each increment they get better and better while the traditional console makers are stuck with old hardware.

Maybe that's too ambitious, and would lead to consumers being upset about the next new thing coming out. Maybe a two year or a three year product cycle would work better. But with each iteration the box becomes potentially more attractive to the traditional console user base.

Perhaps that's not their plan, but it should be something they consider, given the way the current PC market works.

Two things:

1. It might. Simply because the current trend of cross-platform development has already put the brakes on the PC hardware race. Most PC games today are designed to also run on those 8-year old consoles, so it wouldn't be at all hard to make them run on the Steam box.

2. There will be an incentive, as Charles says, for developers to include a "Steam Box mode" in their games, to make sure that they support that platform.

I think the Apple thing is a red herring (and not because Steam and the App Store are 'mortal enemies'). That rumour started when Tim Cook supposedly visited Valve but it turned out that that never actually happened.

Fine, Charles. New thread.