Valve front man Gabe Newell fears that Apple will release new hardware that could render traditional gaming consoles obsolete. At least that is what he said during a game panel at the WTIA TechNW conference - as reported by the Seattle Times.
"I suspect Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people's expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear," said Newell.
Newell also called the rise of "closed" platforms like Apple's iOS and Xbox Live "ominous."
"On the platform side, it's sort of ominous that the world seems to be moving away from open platforms," he said. "I'm worried that the things that traditionally have been the source of a lot of innovation are going - there's going to be an attempt to close those off so somebody will say 'I'm tired of competing with Google, I'm tired of competing with Facebook, I'll apply a console model and exclude the competitors I don't like from my world.'
"They build a shiny sparkling thing that attracts users and then they control people's access to those things."
Source: C&VG
Comments
Re: Gabe Newell: New Apple Hardware Could Render Consoles ...
"They build a shiny sparkling thing that attracts users and then they control people's access to those things."
That's exactly why it's not going to work. Putting up barriers and limitations is what drives people to infringement. They will bypass the system or ignore it and find something more to their liking. you can't control what people do with information.
-Greevar
"Paste superficially profound, but utterly meaningless quotation here."
Re: Gabe Newell: New Apple Hardware Could Render Consoles ...
This is exactly where games started in the first place. Back when Atari, and then Nintendo had almost complete control over development on their systems, therefore, almost no competition. It's just now, it's going online. So if it does happen, history will just repeat itself.
Re: Gabe Newell: New Apple Hardware Could Render Consoles ...
Actually, I think this is more plausible then it initially sounds. Consoles depend on volume. Wii took a big hit out of the market because it showed that low cost could still be fun and bring in a larger segment of the population.
While I doubt it will happen, I could easily see Apple releasing something that has mass appeal and really impacting the economics of console production. Right now people who don't use all of its horsepower kinda subsidize the costs of the people who do.. if an attrative enough unit came out it could suck a lot of that money out of the industry, leaving only the more 'hard core' players who actualy use the full power of the devices.. at which point it might not be worth it to keep producing them.
In other words, I could see the market splitting between low cost low power entertainment devices and PC gaming, with consoles getting squeezed out.
Re: Gabe Newell: New Apple Hardware Could Render Consoles ...
Another classic case of an industry figurehead predicting the death of something they don't use. Just as irrelevant as the rest of them.
Atlanta Video Games Examiner for examiner.com
Re: Gabe Newell: New Apple Hardware Could Render Consoles ...
Being a closed platform is precisely why I don't think this will be the case.