http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/2/284093 ... ng-console

Holy fucking shit...

(Credit goes to Axeldeath for finding the link in "Post What You're Doing Now" thread)

Very nice news if true. I honestly wouldn't mind the PC gaming market being standardized like consoles, without losing the freedom of distribution like Steam and the possibility of things like mods.

Mods. All that matters.

It wont affect me personally because I already have a beastly PC, but I'm thinking of this as a sort of halfway point between consoles and PC. Easy to set up, requires no technical know-how, yet also has better graphics, is an open platform and allows mods etc. Sort of a PC for the masses.

I wonder if it could revitalize PC gaming in the brick and mortar stores as well?

This has so many possibilities...I'm really interested in what comes out of it.

Well, it would be based on digital distribution using... ahem... Steam. I doubt it could revitalize retail games if it doesn't use them.

If they're trying to attract the console crowd I hardly think they'll only use digital distribution.

Why not? Since when does the console crowd prefer physical copies? I know big titles on console only come on disk but who says the console crowd wouldn't like digital distribution. I mean it's already happening to pretty much all indie games on console.

I like physical copies. I'd kinda prefer all my full dlc games to be in physical copies just to add to my shelf.

But nowadays pretty much any big game will get DLC or is broken at launch and require some kind of patch that is not on the disk.

Ask the PSP Go.

I don't have one, so I have no idea what you mean here. Also I don't see how it is relevant, the PSP Go is a handheld.

PSP used physical media, wasn't a success but it made money.

PSP Go used digital download only. It tanked, hard.

But is that the reason it tanked? Or is it for example because you need to pay stupid amounts of money for memory cards(VITA).

The PSP Go tanked because it tried to alter an existing platform. It relied entirely on digital downloads, even though more than half of the PSP's library only existed on UMD. The same isn't true for Steam. Steam has an immense and comprehensive library which has been growing for 7 or 8 years now, and is supported by pretty much every PC developer, with a few large exceptions (Blizzard, EA).

I had totally forgotten about Go.

Steam does not have a lot of games. If they're having 8GB of unnecessary RAM installed and they're also allowing Origin and GfWL on there I have no doubt in my mind that there'd at least be a CD drive. Why would they disallow music, movies etc. just so it could be exclusively digital?

Well, it'll basically be a PC, so it'll have an optical drive. I just doubt your claim that a console built on top of a digital distribution platform (one that pretty much symbolizes the benefits of digital distribution) could revitalize retail sales.

I never said it could, just that it might. You never know what the new customer's buying habits will be.

I think Axel needs to (re)take Statistics. Sales on one end of a market are more likely to have an inverse relationship with sales on the opposite side (i.e. Digital vs. Hard Disk)

And from how it sounds, I'm convinced the Steam Box will NOT have a disc drive, but that's just my opinion.