The "Steam box"

[guyjin]

http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/2/2840932/exclusive-valve-steam-box-gaming-console

A few tantilizing quotes and a patent - but are they close enough to announce something at the Game Developers Conference, or even E3? what do you think?

[MotherGunner]

I hope they can pull it off.  Releasing something of this type and configuring it to be a home console is not only a massive undertaking but a logistical nightmare.  My company experienced this when we tried to publish our products through On-Live.  Assuming they pull it off, it would not be profitable in the first couple of fiscal years and I am not sure how they would account (hardware spec-wise) for titles in their catalog in the future?

[SignOfZeta]

I can't understand how this could do anything but lose money for them. There is NO money in console sales. Every time Sony of MS make a console they lose BILLIONS of dollars. I'm pretty sure MS is still, overall, in the negative from the entire Xbox enterprise 10 years after they started it. They dumped something like $5B into the XBox 1 alone.

The only reason to sell consoles is to sell profitable games and collect license fees from other people's games. Valve is already very successful at doing this so...why the fuck would they?

Maybe PC gaming really is that incredibly fucking dead?

[guyjin]

I'm pretty sure MS is still, overall, in the negative from the entire Xbox enterprise 10 years after they started it.

http://m.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/digital-home/home-networking/xbox-360-finally-makes-money-for-microsoft-161411
The Xbox division of Microsoft has been in the black since 2007.

The only reason to sell consoles is to sell profitable games and collect license fees from other people's games. Valve is already very successful at doing this so...why the fuck would they?

They want a piece of what Nintendo, MS, and Sony have?

Edit: to elaborate, the biggest selling PC games of all time are The Sims(16 million), Sims 2(11 million), and Starcraft(13 Million), and possibly Lemmings(15 million, but that includes console port sales)

There are 7 games on the Wii alone that outsold all of those.

[ParanoiaDragon]

In general, it does sound like a revision of the 3DO in the openess of producing the console & games.

[SignOfZeta]

I'm pretty sure MS is still, overall, in the negative from the entire Xbox enterprise 10 years after they started it.

http://m.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/digital-home/home-networking/xbox-360-finally-makes-money-for-microsoft-161411
The Xbox division of Microsoft has been in the black since 2007.

That article explains how they made $137 million in one quarter. That hardly makes up for the billions on losses from the first year of XBox 1 alone. The entire period of Xbox 1 was loss, and not a small amount of it.

BTW, one billion is one thousand million. I only say this because, honestly, I think a lot of people don't actually understand this when talking about huge sums of money, federal budgets, corporate losses, etc. The Xbox division would have to make $137m quarters for...something like...30 years (!) to break even overall.

Making a console is a HUGE risk. Remember Sega? Even they stopped making consoles. MS has yet to generate any real profit and Sony is skipping lower and lower into irrelevance every year. Nintendo is the only one actually doing well in real numbers, and they seem to be losing the handheld thing a little (maybe) which is a huge amount of their profit.

Its a really really really risky business. It takes enough money to bankrupt several corporations just to launch a system. Personally, I think they are doing pretty well where they are. They aren't rich enough to do what MS is doing, talented enough to do what Sony is doing, or broad enough in expertise to do what Nintendo is doing. They would have to borrow money to make a console...and loans have to be paid back.

Its a terrible idea. So terrible I can't imagine it actually being put into motion.

[NecroPhile]

Valve says the machines were just for their internal use for testing a new UI.

[guyjin]

Well, I guess that's for the best, as I couldn't justify buying one in the foreseeable future anyway.