Valve Honcho Gabe Newell want gaming controls!

[gp32rich]

Penny arcade have an interview with Gabe Newell about Valve, Valve games and the future.


http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/valves-gabe-newell-talks-wearable-computers-rewarding-players-and-whether-w/3


He wants a tablet with gaming controls. He wants open game systems. He wants wearable computing.


He doesn't like DRM and thinks pirates should be fought with on a value basis.


This man is an awesome, level headed true fan of gaming and I hope the suits are listening to him

 

[gadgetoid]

He wants wearable computing.

What's stopping him wearing his phone right now? Huh... huh...


Tablets and gaming controls shouldn't come within a thousand miles of each other. We already have something to fill that niche; it's called a PS Vita.


The Pandora is an open game system, why isn't he writing any software for it?


Got to agree on the DRM and pirates view, though. DRM has only ever been a hassle. GoG.com are on the right track, and thus I buy frequently from them. Steam, slightly less so.


Blizzard... should be burned by a thousand suns. But they send me the games anyway... soo... yeah... loopholes

 

[Stradian]

Gabe does read his e-mail, maybe we should see if he is aware of the pandora? I know the odds are a million to one for steam support, but still... Gabe can make miracles happen.

 

[Caine]

The Pandora is an open game system, why isn't he writing any software for it?

The lack of sold (and shipped) units, I reckon. Until the Pandora ships several hundred thousand times, it won't be commercially viable to develop software for it.

 

[-Tj-]

The guy says "you know" a lot lol. I used to know a guy who said that a lot, started counting how many times he said it instead of listening to what he was actually saying, but I digress.


Gabe's a smart guy, and I agree with a bunch of the stuff he's said, especially on the DRM. Sounds as far as hardware goes he wants a tablet that has games targeted to it that has game controls and no DRM. I think the Vita will test some of that market (DRM aside), and I'm not entirely convinced people want a tablet with gaming controls. Maybe he wants it, but I'm not sure I do.


What I think would be ideal hardware would be something like a Pandora and a Vita mashed together with wireless output to a monitor or TV. Tablets are a bit too big to game on, and phones, most of them anyway, are a little too small for certain types of touch screen games. I don't have my Vita yet, but I've heard it's on the larger side of "pocketable," so perhaps around the 5" mark might be the screen size holy grail. With a tablet you're stuck with the screen size you bought it with. At least with wireless video output you can have a larger screen if you wanted to. Dunno about lag, tho, but I'm sure in the future, if there is any lag at all, it will be solved.


And I'm pretty sure he already knows about the Pandora.


Edit: I found this interesting:


"... if we have to sell hardware we will."


I'm not all that interested in seeing yet another console on the market (hell, I have a hard enough time dealing with what's already out there), but a Valve game system perks my interest quite a lot.

 

[Stradian]

I have wrote this letter to Gabe, I am interested to see how he replies...

Dear Gabe Newell,

I have read your interview with Penny Arcade and how you wished to have open consoles and gaming controls for tablets. I completely agree with you, and there is an outstanding pioneer for these respected markets. OpenPandora, Ghmb., along with OpenPandora, Ltd. have produced, and are going to continue to reproduce the Open Pandora Console (http://openpandora.org/). (The project was producing units, then became plagued with supplier and manufacturing issue, but has been corrected and will reproduce units soon.)


The openpandora was created by the home brew community because they wanted something more then what available (hacked PSP, GP2X, etc). The Openpandora eventually became a clamshell console and Ultra-mobile personal computer. What you mentioned in your interview with PA, you stated that you wanted something that had gaming controls and was open: the openpandora is open (running a full Linux distro.), has the best controls I have ever seen on a handheld (Consisting of a keyboard, 2 nubs, d-pad, two shoulder buttons, four game-pad style buttons, and a touchscreen.) In your interview, you have also implied that it should be powerful; it was, however, powerful relative to the other hardware around it back in 2008.


In the future, the developers have expressed interest in developing a second pandora, around the Texas interments cortex a15 processor. The pandora will most likely keep the same form factor and may even support android through the use of a wrapper while keeping the full Linux distro.


Gabe, If the second pandora or a similar product was endorsed in some way and then supported with commercial games from the big developers, with Valve leading the way, I believe it would be beneficial to the the open-source community and Valve.If Valve was to support a new, open console, and enable a large video game library on it, backed by the steam service, the video game hardware industry may have to adapt to this new model and include a way to have users to enable the steam service on their future consoles.


Sincerely,


Joshua "Stradian" White


P.S.


Thank you for reading my two cents.

 

[Binky]

A major game firm publishing titles for P2 would be awesome, as long as they let ED, Craig & the team run the hardware side of things.

 

[MarioPandio]

Excellent letter, lets hope he sees the potential here if he was unaware of Pandora

 

[craigix]

You know it might be worth keeping all these people in places of power who think like this in a list.


Then when/if the Pandora2 is ready to explode on to the scene we contact all of them and ask for just a tweet or a link.


An explosion of publicity like that could be what pushes the P2 beyond the P1 user base.


If we go with Kickstarter and do all this publicity over a two week period then it could really help make things work.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Seems there is another site like kickstarter :


http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/02/12/2331242/an-open-alternative-to-kickstarter

 

[Caine]

Excellent point Craig. A handful of such people can create a tremendous buzz.

 

[gp32rich]

The guy says "you know" a lot lol. I used to know a guy who said that a lot, started counting how many times he said it instead of listening to what he was actually saying, but I digress.

Looks to me like someone had a speech-to-text on and didn't bother to edit for readability. Gets a feel dor the person but the message can get lost.

He wants wearable computing.

What's stopping him wearing his phone right now? Huh... huh...

Ah-hah! When he talks about wearable computing he's not just talking portable... he talks game pixels overlapping realworld pixels in a headsup display. I'm thinking GoogleGoggles™ with gesture and wink controls (and funny looks as I shuffle down the street with wild eyes shooting combine infantry in HL3

 

[-Tj-]

Augmented reality! It would be interesting to make a game that overlays images onto the real world that isn't confined to a phone or tablet or something. It could give "go outside and play" a whole new meaning.

 

[Nintendo]

What Gabe wants is a JXD S7100


Seriously though...he wants a WikiPad.

 

[-Tj-]

This just popped up on Engadget today: http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/21/nyt-google-to-sell-android-based-heads-up-display-glasses-this/


He could use that to make himself a Half-Life-style HUD for everyday use.

 

[gp32rich]

you wouldn't catch me making an angry forum post in these ...

just wrong Wrong WRONG!!1! (ow!)

 

[-Tj-]

Too... many... jokes... .... must... resist..!!

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Jokes like : Where's the third picture with the joystick ?


^^

 

[Stradian]

Do these have hand-less support?

 

[Nintendo]

I bet it has a rear touch pad like PS Vita has?