Gabe teases new Steam Console?
Added 2021-05-13 15:22:54 +0000 UTCA few days ago, Gabe Newell was doing a Q&A session at Sancta Maria College in Auckland New Zealand. During that session, a student asked "will Steam be porting any games to console or will it just stay on PC?"
According to reports, Newell was a bit reluctant but replied "You will get a better idea of that by the end of this year." He then followed up with "and it won't be the answer you expect. You'll say 'Ah-ha! Now I get what he was talking about."
Now, obviously... Gabe was incredibly cagey here. But let's take a moment and think about this.
Valve have been working on Proton--an open source Windows compatibility layer based on Wine--for almost 4 years at this point. Why? Linux adoption on the Steam Hardware Survey seems relatively constant... never even cracking 3% of total Steam users. So the idea of developing Proton for just a few million Steam users seems kinda fruitless doesn't it?
But it would make sense if you think back to Valve's failed Steam Machine initiative. Where Valve partnered with OEMs to produce... ya know... a lineup of overpriced, Steam-branded PCs... and the only games you could play on them at the time were Steam games that had a Linux client.
But now with Proton--that problem has been resolved. So I guess the question is: are we going to see a Steam-branded console by years end? And not a confusing flood of PCs that are overpriced and vary in spec--but instead a single, first-party console manufactured by Valve which provides a baseline for games to target.
Valve has experience with manufacturing their own first-party hardware, now. The Steam Controller, the Index and Knuckles controllers, even the Steam Link. These devices show Valve can make quality stuff. And I would imagine that the discontinuance of the Steam Controller last year could be a prelude to a new era of Steam hardware.
And then there's the whole SteamVR bridge for Proton. It allows SteamVR to run natively on Linux while the Windows executable for the game is being played. This gives you more performance and less overhead for SteamVR--and VR is really where you need every bit of performance.
Maybe they're working on an all-in-one SteamVR system to compete with Oculus? One can only hope.
Now, the consensus seems to be that Valve is going to partner with existing console vendors to bring Steam to these platforms. Maybe Microsoft would go along with that, but I don't see Valve wanting to do that at all. Perhaps Half-life: Alyx and future VR titles will be coming to PlayStationVR's upcoming new hardware? I can see that happening...
But I seriously doubt Sony or Microsoft would allow Steam on their platforms.
I don't know... I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. What could Gabe be teasing with this Q&A? Let me know down in the comments.
