Valve announces console to compete with WiiU, PS4 & NeXtBox

[Romo 2 Austin]

Very little information out so far but it is confirmed.

n4g.com/news/1135875/valve-will-release-pc-console-next-year

[dexternjack]

Very little information out so far but it is confirmed.

n4g.com/news/1135875/valve-will-release-pc-console-next-year
Would rather them develop the next Half-life game first :(

[Romo 2 Austin]

Would rather them develop the next Half-life game first :(

I got a feeling it is already made. Half Life 3 & Doom 4 as exclusives on launch will give this system a great shot. Maybe Left 4 Dead 3 aswell. The system has to have exclusive titles and what better than 2 of the most anticipated games.

[Hoofbite]

"Newell says the PCs will compete with the Xbox 8 and the PS4. "

Xbox 8?

Is that what they are going to call it?

And it doesn't sound like a true console. Just a PC geared to playing games on a TV.

Whatever, I don't really care if it's full console or not. Anything that increases the competition is good for gaming.

XBOX literally raised the bar when it came out because XBOX Live was far and away the best means to play online.

Playstation has been playing catchup ever since in terms of online play and interface. Can you imagine how horrid the state of online console gaming would be if XBL was never put out there and the only option people had was Playstation's horrid dial-up compatible network.

[Future]

"Newell says the PCs will compete with the Xbox 8 and the PS4. "

Xbox 8?

Is that what they are going to call it?

And it doesn't sound like a true console. Just a PC geared to playing games on a TV.

Whatever, I don't really care if it's full console or not. Anything that increases the competition is good for gaming.

XBOX literally raised the bar when it came out because XBOX Live was far and away the best means to play online.

Playstation has been playing catchup ever since in terms of online play and interface. Can you imagine how horrid the state of online console gaming would be if XBL was never put out there and the only option people had was Playstation's horrid dial-up compatible network.
FWIW, ps2 had an option to connect to cable internet and all you had to do was plug and play. It was free in the early days and ridiculously simple to use.

[TheCount]

Interesting. Being able to play PC games on your computer without having to figure it all out on your own could be very a good supplement system.

I still think shooters are 10x better with a keyboard and mouse.

[Hoofbite]

FWIW, ps2 had an option to connect to cable internet and all you had to do was plug and play. It was free in the early days and ridiculously simple to use.

Yeah but your playing with or against dial up users which is the main issue.

[Future]

Yeah but your playing with or against dial up users which is the main issue.
I guess, but at some point that would have faded out, regardless of what other consoles did, that was my point. I don't think that, had XBox not done what it did, that Playstation wouldn't have kept up with technology...

[Hoofbite]

I guess, but at some point that would have faded out, regardless of what other consoles did, that was my point. I don't think that, had XBox not done what it did, that Playstation wouldn't have kept up with technology...

Sure the direction would have been towards high speed but even when they got there, I have little doubt it wouldn't have worked as well as either platform works now.

[TheCount]

Yeah but your playing with or against dial up users which is the main issue.

On the PS2? No you weren't, the PS2 required broadband. Maybe there were a few exceptions, but from what I remember, the real problem was that each manufacturer was responsible for their own online gaming backbone, that was the real problem. Some were better than others, and a lot of game makers just opted out of it altogether rather than deal with the headache of maintaining servers.

Live fixed that, or at least started to fix that.

I certainly agree that competition is good though.

[Hoofbite]

On the PS2? No you weren't, the PS2 required broadband. Maybe there were a few exceptions, but from what I remember, the real problem was that each manufacturer was responsible for their own online gaming backbone, that was the real problem. Some were better than others, and a lot of game makers just opted out of it altogether rather than deal with the headache of maintaining servers.

Live fixed that, or at least started to fix that.

I certainly agree that competition is good though.

I'm pretty sure that it supported dial up.

[RastaRocket]

Would rather them develop the next Half-life game first :(

I believe they are.

However, this is extremely interesting. Valve owns Steam, which provides PC gamers with insanely cheap games for download compared to the rest of the market. I wouldn't be surprised if these consoles don't even use disks, and just have downloadable game. The entire gaming portion of their console could be based around steam which would be awesome.

I wonder if you can upgrade your console similar to a PC?

[Heisenberg]

Valve has recently started putting a lot of work into the Linux side of things.

I'd imagine that's the OS they're going to use on this.

[Ren]

My home computer is already a "steambox", i really don't see the point here.

[Romo 2 Austin]

I believe they are.

However, this is extremely interesting. Valve owns Steam, which provides PC gamers with insanely cheap games for download compared to the rest of the market. I wouldn't be surprised if these consoles don't even use disks, and just have downloadable game. The entire gaming portion of their console could be based around steam which would be awesome.

I wonder if you can upgrade your console similar to a PC?

If this is basically a portal for Stream to the living room as well as exclusives like HL3 I will probably choose this console over the next Xbox but with the rumored price mark being $299.99 for ps4 and xbox might not have to choose.

[TheCount]

I'm pretty sure that it supported dial up.

I'm sure the system did - I'm saying that most games did not. IT was up to each manufacturer, and unless you were playing a very simple game, most manufacturers disabled Dial-Up support because it was unplayable.

So it's not like any game you popped in, you would be "playing against people with dial-up". That was the exception, not the rule.

[Kangaroo]

I'm pretty sure that it supported dial up.

I use to play MMORP's back in the day on 33.6 modems and then the major 56k upgrade and then you had the lucky bastages that had ISDN Lines (I had friends with that) and had dual 64k channels.