Co-founder of Valve and managing director of video game development Gabe Newell recently addressed the audience at DICE gaming conference as a keynote speaker and revealed his thoughts on the future of gaming. While there was no mention of Half-Life 3, the video game guru did offer interesting insights on what will appeal to consumers in the coming years.
First off, Apple, according to Newell, is the greatest threat to traditional console gaming. The reason, he explains, is that consumers will realize that their PC can be a valuable tool in the living room. For instance, a low-cost computer could be used in the living room, while a more capable rig elsewhere does the grunt work utilizing streaming technologies. It's this kind of ecosystem that makes Apple potentially dangerous, with its iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
"It's not scary what's going to happen on the console side. It's scarier what Apple's going to do," Newell said.
Still, Newell believes that cloud-based gaming is still a ways off due to latency issues. Until the issue of lag and bandwidth connections are put at the "edge" rather than the "center," he states that it simply won't be as viable as simple in-house processing.
Newell also touched upon making Steam even more friendly to PC developers by possibly offering expensive tools, such as a $10,000 3D animating app, for free in exchange for revenue stream. Newell also wants to the change the process by which Valve approves submissions for Steam, which he says is outdated.
Newell went on to praise their audience, saying that it's obvious from games like Team Fortress 2 that users are not only creating more content for the game than Valve, but better content as well.
"Our customers have defeated us, not by a little but by a lot. They're building content that's just as good or better than what we're building and they're building it at a spectacular rate," Newell explained.
As we mentioned earlier, Newell did not comment on Half-Life 3, although a previous rumor suggests that Valve is aiming to make the game more open world, like Skyrim.
Thanks to: IGN