Pikminiman
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Yesterday, Gabe Newell took to the stage at International CES to officially unveil the first generation of Steam Machines. During his very brief on-stage appearance, after revealing the partner hardware units, Gabe confirmed that controllers will be sold separately, and independent developers will even be able to create and sell their own variants.
Most of Gabe's on-stage appearance can be seen in this video, uploaded by Maximum PC Magazine:
Here is a full transcript of the above video:
Afterwards, Gabe fielded a very short Q&A session, during which he remarked about his ease of mind regarding the competition with the Xbox One, joking, "well, it'd take a while for them to catch up. I mean, we're at 65 million [users]." This quote cleverly and subtly illustrates one of the great benefits of having an open platform, i.e. users don't lose their game libraries when making the transition.
He then promptly vacated the stage to make time for the hardware manufacturer partners to speak directly to the press. Gabe's impressively short time spent on-stage was presumably Valve's way of stepping back and demonstrating that, while the Steam Machine idea is their own, its long-term implementation is up to the hardware makers, which echoes Gabe's emphasis on the necessity for openness and competition in the PC industry.
As always, we'll be sure to keep you up-to-date about the latest news regarding all official Steam hardware.
Most of Gabe's on-stage appearance can be seen in this video, uploaded by Maximum PC Magazine:
Here is a full transcript of the above video:
Doug Lombardi:
Good evening. Thanks for coming. Just wanted to let everybody know some housekeeping items real quick: There are some thumb drives we're going to hand out with some assets of them in just a minute. There's a full press release that will come out with some of this information, as well. As always, as everyone knows, email me if you have any other questions beyond the information that's given. There is one more company that came in late, Maingear, who unfortunately is not on this display behind me. But they are on the press release, and I think that's it. So, without further ado, I'd like to introduce Gabe Newell, who's going to tell you some more about Steam Machines and make an announcement here tonight for us. Gabe?
Gabe Newell:
So, I'm not going to use the mic, so let me know if you can't hear me. This has been a great year for the PC...
[Crowd members suggest Gabe use microphone]
Okay...
[Crowd laughing]
Gabe:
So, this has been a great year for the PC. We're up to 65 million accounts on Steam. We have 6 million people simultaneous. I think, with the holiday season just passed, we're at about 62% year over year revenue growth. And my favorite statistic is that Dota 2 is bigger than Monday Night Football. So, why?
We're just one company in the PC space. Why are we seeing this continued growth? Why are we seeing users and games and hardware development? And we attribute it to the openness of the platform. The PC is successful because we're all benefitting from the competition with each other. If Twitter comes along, our games benefit. If Nvidia makes better graphics technology, all the games are going to shine. If we come out with a better game, people are going to buy more PCs. And that has been the engine of this growth.
Now, a couple of years ago, we started to get pretty worried that maybe that openness was going to be challenged—that there was success in proprietary platforms in the living room and in mobile, and that that was going to cause our entire industry to step away from the opportunity of openness. We started to think, "what can we do? There are lots of people who can take on this challenge, but what are some of the pieces that Valve could try to help with?"
We picked three things to look at. The first was thinking about the user interface, the operating system, the platform side of it. We had a lot of experience with Steam, and we can work with developing something called Big Picture, and then, moving all of that on top of Linux, we'd have a platform that everybody could use.
There were a set of form factor issues. The hardware that you're used to using on an airplane is not necessarily the right form factor for what you want to have in the living room. So there's a set of issues there that we wanted to address in terms of hardware design. We wanted to prove that they were possible and to share that knowledge with partners.
Third issue is, how do you interact with these devices? We needed a controller design that was consistent with the interaction modes that people were going to be using in the living room. That doesn't mean that people won't use mice or keyboards, but it does mean that they have another option—one that really allows software developers to give people great experiences in that environment, while also continuing to give people access to all of the great internet and PC applications.
So, last year we said, "okay, we're going to be building some of these machines." We built them and [have] given them out to people. And today we're taking the next step. And the next step is to say that there are a bunch of other hardware manufacturers who are also going to be introducing Steam Machines. So, here's the list plus one of the people who are here tonight. All these hardware developers are here and are very interested in hearing from you and talking to you about what their experiences are, what their thoughts are about the PC moving into the living room and the steps that we've taken to enable that.
[...] Here are the [...] thirteen new machines. So, each one of these represents a different take on the right solution for their customers in the living room. We look forward to having our games and our platform on [these], and I'm sure all of those people are interested in talking with you.
Let's see... I think that about covers it. I'll actually take a couple of quick questions... if anyone has one.
Audience member:
What is the variance in specs on these? Is it from super low-end to super high-end? Or are they all sort of in the middle?
Gabe:
There's a lot of variation, low-end to high-end, both in the devices you see here and in product lines that people are going to have. That's one of the strengths that the PC has. Customers can get the experience that they want while software developers can be guaranteed a stable platform for delivering value.
Audience member:
Is Valve going to be producing its own line of hardware and selling it to consumers? Or is the prototype it?
Gabe:
We're going to continue to make that decision as we go along. We've been happy with results during the hardware development. We have plans to build more machines as our customers demand. We also expect people to be really happy with the range of offerings coming from these hardware manufacturers.
Audience member:
Do you have a release window or date for when consumers will be able to get some of these machines?
Gabe:
That's a great question for the hardware manufacturers who are here. You give each one of them the chance to answer that.
Audience member:
Did you say that Valve is going to be making hardware themselves?
Gabe:
At first, we made 300, which is a very tiny step, but I guess everything starts with a small step. We'll make what we need to. We really view our role in this as being enabling. So, whatever we can do that's going to be helpful to other hardware manufacturers—whether it's with controller design, or building specific kinds of boxes—that's what we're going to intend to do. It's very much, 'how can we collaborate with the chip makers and the system integrators? What's the most useful thing for us to do?' And part of the reason for holding events like this is get feedback from them on, what are the next problems they'd like us to take on.
Audience member:
Are you guys going to be selling the Steam Controller separately yourselves?
Gabe:
Yeah, we'll be selling Steam Controllers separately, and then other people will be selling their versions of Steam Controllers as well.
Audience member:
And how much would that be, and do you have a release date?
Gabe:
No, we don't have a day or pricing on those yet.
Audience member:
So, Microsoft just announced three million units of Xbox One were sold at launch, for the last three months. Can you hit that target by the end of the year? Can you do three million units?
Gabe:
Well, I mean, it'd take a while for them to catch up. I mean, we're at 65 million. Part of what...
[audience laughs]
Part of why we think that this is the right direction to go in is that we can benefit from everything that people have already done. If I buy a game on Steam and I'm playing it on Windows, I can go to one of the Steam Machines and I already have the game. So you benefit as a developer, you benefit as the consumer in having that PC experience extended to the living room.
Audience member:
What has the feedback been like from your beta users so far?
Gabe:
The beta users have been super happy. We actually kind of want them to tell us what's wrong, so we're kind of poking at them a little harder. Right now, they're just saying this is the best thing since the beginning of time, or something. So we're trying to get them to give us more "how can we iterate on this? What are the steps that we need to solve next?"
One more question.
Audience member:
What are you doing to encourage developers to develop for SteamOS?
Gabe:
Well, right now we have about 250 titles running. There are a bunch of different things you need to do for developers. You need to help them make money. They need to view that as an opportunity. You need to give them the development tools that make it easy for them to support Linux and Mac and Windows simultaneously. We need to make sure that we've addressed concerns for issues they raise about controller design. And on and on. So, just the kinds of blue-collar stuff you do any time you're developing a platform. Same kinds of things we've been doing to make Windows the success it is currently.
So, rather than talking to me, you should now be talking to the hardware manufacturers. They all have very interesting things to say, and I'd like to say thank you to all of them and to all of you for attending this evening.
[applause]
Good evening. Thanks for coming. Just wanted to let everybody know some housekeeping items real quick: There are some thumb drives we're going to hand out with some assets of them in just a minute. There's a full press release that will come out with some of this information, as well. As always, as everyone knows, email me if you have any other questions beyond the information that's given. There is one more company that came in late, Maingear, who unfortunately is not on this display behind me. But they are on the press release, and I think that's it. So, without further ado, I'd like to introduce Gabe Newell, who's going to tell you some more about Steam Machines and make an announcement here tonight for us. Gabe?
Gabe Newell:
So, I'm not going to use the mic, so let me know if you can't hear me. This has been a great year for the PC...
[Crowd members suggest Gabe use microphone]
Okay...
[Crowd laughing]
Gabe:
So, this has been a great year for the PC. We're up to 65 million accounts on Steam. We have 6 million people simultaneous. I think, with the holiday season just passed, we're at about 62% year over year revenue growth. And my favorite statistic is that Dota 2 is bigger than Monday Night Football. So, why?
We're just one company in the PC space. Why are we seeing this continued growth? Why are we seeing users and games and hardware development? And we attribute it to the openness of the platform. The PC is successful because we're all benefitting from the competition with each other. If Twitter comes along, our games benefit. If Nvidia makes better graphics technology, all the games are going to shine. If we come out with a better game, people are going to buy more PCs. And that has been the engine of this growth.
Now, a couple of years ago, we started to get pretty worried that maybe that openness was going to be challenged—that there was success in proprietary platforms in the living room and in mobile, and that that was going to cause our entire industry to step away from the opportunity of openness. We started to think, "what can we do? There are lots of people who can take on this challenge, but what are some of the pieces that Valve could try to help with?"
We picked three things to look at. The first was thinking about the user interface, the operating system, the platform side of it. We had a lot of experience with Steam, and we can work with developing something called Big Picture, and then, moving all of that on top of Linux, we'd have a platform that everybody could use.
There were a set of form factor issues. The hardware that you're used to using on an airplane is not necessarily the right form factor for what you want to have in the living room. So there's a set of issues there that we wanted to address in terms of hardware design. We wanted to prove that they were possible and to share that knowledge with partners.
Third issue is, how do you interact with these devices? We needed a controller design that was consistent with the interaction modes that people were going to be using in the living room. That doesn't mean that people won't use mice or keyboards, but it does mean that they have another option—one that really allows software developers to give people great experiences in that environment, while also continuing to give people access to all of the great internet and PC applications.
So, last year we said, "okay, we're going to be building some of these machines." We built them and [have] given them out to people. And today we're taking the next step. And the next step is to say that there are a bunch of other hardware manufacturers who are also going to be introducing Steam Machines. So, here's the list plus one of the people who are here tonight. All these hardware developers are here and are very interested in hearing from you and talking to you about what their experiences are, what their thoughts are about the PC moving into the living room and the steps that we've taken to enable that.
[...] Here are the [...] thirteen new machines. So, each one of these represents a different take on the right solution for their customers in the living room. We look forward to having our games and our platform on [these], and I'm sure all of those people are interested in talking with you.
Let's see... I think that about covers it. I'll actually take a couple of quick questions... if anyone has one.
Audience member:
What is the variance in specs on these? Is it from super low-end to super high-end? Or are they all sort of in the middle?
Gabe:
There's a lot of variation, low-end to high-end, both in the devices you see here and in product lines that people are going to have. That's one of the strengths that the PC has. Customers can get the experience that they want while software developers can be guaranteed a stable platform for delivering value.
Audience member:
Is Valve going to be producing its own line of hardware and selling it to consumers? Or is the prototype it?
Gabe:
We're going to continue to make that decision as we go along. We've been happy with results during the hardware development. We have plans to build more machines as our customers demand. We also expect people to be really happy with the range of offerings coming from these hardware manufacturers.
Audience member:
Do you have a release window or date for when consumers will be able to get some of these machines?
Gabe:
That's a great question for the hardware manufacturers who are here. You give each one of them the chance to answer that.
Audience member:
Did you say that Valve is going to be making hardware themselves?
Gabe:
At first, we made 300, which is a very tiny step, but I guess everything starts with a small step. We'll make what we need to. We really view our role in this as being enabling. So, whatever we can do that's going to be helpful to other hardware manufacturers—whether it's with controller design, or building specific kinds of boxes—that's what we're going to intend to do. It's very much, 'how can we collaborate with the chip makers and the system integrators? What's the most useful thing for us to do?' And part of the reason for holding events like this is get feedback from them on, what are the next problems they'd like us to take on.
Audience member:
Are you guys going to be selling the Steam Controller separately yourselves?
Gabe:
Yeah, we'll be selling Steam Controllers separately, and then other people will be selling their versions of Steam Controllers as well.
Audience member:
And how much would that be, and do you have a release date?
Gabe:
No, we don't have a day or pricing on those yet.
Audience member:
So, Microsoft just announced three million units of Xbox One were sold at launch, for the last three months. Can you hit that target by the end of the year? Can you do three million units?
Gabe:
Well, I mean, it'd take a while for them to catch up. I mean, we're at 65 million. Part of what...
[audience laughs]
Part of why we think that this is the right direction to go in is that we can benefit from everything that people have already done. If I buy a game on Steam and I'm playing it on Windows, I can go to one of the Steam Machines and I already have the game. So you benefit as a developer, you benefit as the consumer in having that PC experience extended to the living room.
Audience member:
What has the feedback been like from your beta users so far?
Gabe:
The beta users have been super happy. We actually kind of want them to tell us what's wrong, so we're kind of poking at them a little harder. Right now, they're just saying this is the best thing since the beginning of time, or something. So we're trying to get them to give us more "how can we iterate on this? What are the steps that we need to solve next?"
One more question.
Audience member:
What are you doing to encourage developers to develop for SteamOS?
Gabe:
Well, right now we have about 250 titles running. There are a bunch of different things you need to do for developers. You need to help them make money. They need to view that as an opportunity. You need to give them the development tools that make it easy for them to support Linux and Mac and Windows simultaneously. We need to make sure that we've addressed concerns for issues they raise about controller design. And on and on. So, just the kinds of blue-collar stuff you do any time you're developing a platform. Same kinds of things we've been doing to make Windows the success it is currently.
So, rather than talking to me, you should now be talking to the hardware manufacturers. They all have very interesting things to say, and I'd like to say thank you to all of them and to all of you for attending this evening.
[applause]
He then promptly vacated the stage to make time for the hardware manufacturer partners to speak directly to the press. Gabe's impressively short time spent on-stage was presumably Valve's way of stepping back and demonstrating that, while the Steam Machine idea is their own, its long-term implementation is up to the hardware makers, which echoes Gabe's emphasis on the necessity for openness and competition in the PC industry.
As always, we'll be sure to keep you up-to-date about the latest news regarding all official Steam hardware.
