Interesting Valve/OpenGL, mobile gaming article..


I care about 3D and Iove it. You just have to get into it just like anything else.
If this was really the selling point of the 3DS then why the 3DS didn't sell well in the first 6 months it was out ?

Nintendo was pushing the 3D aspect of it with marketing like crazy and nobody cared because nobody thought it had any value.

What made the 3DS a good choice was its games, not the 3D effect.  
 
Ha! "Mavericks in this industry" ? This must be a good joke. Apart from the Wii, there's hasn't been much innovation in what Nintendo does for dozens of years.
Even if one was to take "dozens" as two dozen, 24 years ago was 1990 and due to the month would be before the launch of the Super Nintendo in Japan, and the Gameboy outside of Japan.  Which in effect means you're stating the only revolutionary thing that Nintendo did was create another MOS 8502 derivative powered 8-bit console in 1985, and introduce a d-pad and two button controller.

Thus you're not counting the Super Nintendo with things like shoulder buttons, the N64's introduction of the analog stick, etc. as innovative.  I don't think you'll have many people agree with your sentiment.

The WiiU gamepad was nothing new, the same technology was already existing on tablets way before the WiiU was launched
Going to have to disagree.  The closest Tablet platform analog would be the nVidia shield with streaming, which came out after the Wii U and the Vita functioning in that way which has only recently really been put to a functional state with the PS4.

The no-TV option is potentially revolutionary in of itself from a family/child use case perspective.  The touch technology chosen is also pretty much ideal for the application.  It's not designed for people trying to navigate the internet of screens too small to work without having to rely on hack solutions like multitouch zooming.

The 3DS's 3D screen ? Useless. It did not change how we play games or anything.
Star Fox 3D and several other titles take advantage with being able to perceive more depth.

they made the 2DS recently, because they realised people don't really care anyway.
The more common interpretation is that the 2DS was created as a reduced cost model meant to specifically target younger audiences that have issues with breaking nice things.  An age group that parents also tend to be concerned about things like eye strain, and helped to turbocharge the launch of Pokemon X/Y, that launched on the same day.

And contrary to naysayers like yourself the platform has begun to take off.

Nintendo is the least innovative company around, they're from the most conservative part of Japan as well (Kyoto), and that matches very well with their attitude. And in terms of games, they just keep rehashing the same IPs and characters and series over and over again. Mario 36, Zelda 53, Mario Kart 12, Mario Party 79, no thank you.
Traditional Nintendo IPs include:

Metroid (Usually 1-2 per gen, but skipped the N64)

Donkey Kong

Kirby

Mario/Wario/etc. (Usually 1-3 per gen with significant differences)

Warioware

Zelda (Usually 1-3 per gen)

Smash Brothers (Usually 1-3 per gen)

Mario Party

Mario Kart

Paper Mario/Mario RPG

Pokemon (Usually 1-3 per gen)

Pikmin

etc.

Note: While Nintendo will occasionally do things in a similar fashion they usually take a radically different approach with these between games in terms of gameplay and story elements.  The result is they tend to result in fresh games that just happen to have similar characters and some similar design elements, and hence the longevity of these IPs.  

It's also simply incorrect to imply that they haven't been creating new IPs, or that they rely that heavily on their old ones.  One of the major seller for the Wii was the Wii Fit line.  Similarly Brain Age was one of the major sellers for the DS.  It'd be more accurate to say they aren't completely negligent in taking the time to farm their IPs given some of them, like Metroid have actually skipped entire console generations.

There's also the question who you think is more innovative?  Sony's consoles have been a line of media players with a relatively beefy slice of hardware strapped on, and their controller design pretty much has been sit in stone since the dual shock was introduced with dual analog to the PS1.  Microsoft's console approach basically has involved making a kitbash PC with a controller whose design was pretty much laid in stone with the original XBox.  SEGA's been out of the game since the 6th gen so I doubt you'd even be counting them..
 
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Even if one was to take "dozens" as two dozen, 24 years ago was 1990 and due to the month would be before the launch of the Super Nintendo in Japan, and the Gameboy outside of Japan.  Which in effect means you're stating the only revolutionary thing that Nintendo did was create another MOS 8502 derivative powered 8-bit console in 1985, and introduce a d-pad and two button controller.   Thus you're not counting the Super Nintendo with things like shoulder buttons, the N64's introduction of the analog stick, etc. as innovative.  I don't think you'll have many people agree with your sentiment.
The Super Nintendo had great hardware but was in no way revolutionary. It didn't make certain games suddenly possible - you had very much the same kind of games on the Megadrive. The GameBoy, well OK, I'll grant you that. 

Shoulder buttons ? Meh, i fail to see such great innovation there, it's borderless obvious that sooner or later you would need more buttons and that they would be placed around there. The analog stick ? Don't make me laugh. Analog controls existed in PC for YEARS before the N64, Nintendo didn't invent shit there, they just made it work in a thumb format and that's it. The technology was far from new. And the implementation on the N64 pad was far from being great. 

Going to have to disagree.  The closest Tablet platform analog would be the nVidia shield with streaming, which came out after the Wii U and the Vita functioning in that way which has only recently really been put to a functional state with the PS4.
Streaming from the PS3 to the PSP existed way before The WiiU came out. 

The no-TV option is potentially revolutionary in of itself from a family/child use case perspective. 
Uh, no. 84% of households in the US have more than one TV at home, (the average is around 2 to 3) so there's never really any use case for "not having a TV to plug your console on". At least not on the major markets. This was a dumb idea from the beginning, from a company which did not know enough about the markets they were targetting.  

Star Fox 3D and several other titles take advantage with being able to perceive more depth.
Would the games suddenly "break" if you didn't have 3D. Don't answer the question, I already know the answer.  

The more common interpretation is that the 2DS was created as a reduced cost model meant to specifically target younger audiences that have issues with breaking nice things.
The other interpretation is that 3D is not a big thing at all for handhelds. It's a gimmick. Notice how Nintendo is not advertising anything 3d related to the 3ds releases? Well, it's obvious why.  
 
It's also simply incorrect to imply that they haven't been creating new IPs, or that they rely that heavily on their old ones.  One of the major seller for the Wii was the Wii Fit line.  Similarly Brain Age was one of the major sellers for the DS..
There are not games. They are hybrid training software with gamification elements. But they have no real game elements.  
 
There's also the question who you think is more innovative?  Sony's consoles have been a line of media players with a relatively beefy slice of hardware strapped on, and their controller design pretty much has been sit in stone since the dual shock was introduced with dual analog to the PS1.  Microsoft's console approach basically has involved making a kitbash PC with a controller whose design was pretty much laid in stone with the original XBox.  SEGA's been out of the game since the 6th gen so I doubt you'd even be counting them..
Well I'd make the case that both Xbox has been more innovative than Nintendo in the same timeframe.

Xbox has been pushing for online gaming and it does it better than any other platform. It had the Kinect as well which went way further than any other movement detection system before. I don't really care about both, but these were clearly innovations. 

As for Sony, they haven't been very much innovative in recent history, but because of their market position they get a number of exclusive games from 3rd, 2nd or 1st parties that still make it worth purchasing, and bring lots of variety on the platform. I can't say the same for the Wii or the WiiU where the best selling games were only the Nintendo ones, as usual. 

Oh, and if you ever want to play GTA, Skyrim, Dark Souls or another serious/adult/demanding game, on a Nintendo system, you can forget about it. Nintendo consoles are for kids, and they are clearly marketed in that way. The Wii gave them the chance to expand, but somehow they didn't learn. 
 
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I care about 3D and Iove it. You just have to get into it just like anything else.
If this was really the selling point of the 3DS then why the 3DS didn't sell well in the first 6 months it was out ?

Nintendo was pushing the 3D aspect of it with marketing like crazy and nobody cared because nobody thought it had any value.

What made the 3DS a good choice was its games, not the 3D effect.  
It does make the game look much prettier and make you feel like you are in the game yourself (at least for me).  Take Ridge Racer for instance, the game feels way more enjoyable and much prettier when 3D is on (all the way) than when 3D is off.  I can even go as far as saying that it is nicer than the PSVita version.  When 3D is off, it looks and feel like a DS game.  So 3D has a lot of to say there.  

Another one is Tekken 3D, it's jaw dropping.  I am still awaiting Soul Calibur 3D and Shenmue 3D on my 3DS (wishful thinking). 

Star Fox 3D and several other titles take advantage with being able to perceive more depth.
Would the games suddenly "break" if you didn't have 3D. Don't answer the question, I already know the answer.  
If one of the speaker in your stereo system breaks, would that break the music?  No, it just less enjoyable.
 
Mouhaha, it always makes me laugh when an article claims that you get the same quality of graphics on a mobile platform as in a PC which runs a 300 Watts graphic card. This is just a megaload of bullshit.
sorry but your actual mobile plateform can get the same quality as a 5year old 300 Watts graphic card... take care about how you formulate things :)

that said we all agree that theses articles comparing actual mobile chip with actual desktop chips worth absolutely nothing and are all biased to no end
 
Is PC gaming coming to mobile?

An inevitability afaic

Until it's actually viable/cost effective etc, well that's another matter..
While most part is true in my opinion (except the "mobile gfx" to "pc gfx" comparison), I can't help myself having the feeling that this is a "all hail to steam" article that has no real "big news" factor. The biggest "choking points" where that they wrote in the third paragraph: "In actual fact, what we are seeing here are the first fledgling steps of an entirely open gaming platform..." Steam may be many things but it is in no way "entirely open".The trend to go multiplatform is already years old, with middleware beeing more and more accepted in the gaming industry. Valve is a little late there (probably awoken by Microsofts plan to also generate money via a software store) but with MS and Sony console devisions playing into their hands now by providing consoles with PC hardware.

Instead of stating the obvious they should have shed some light on the problems that occur when plattforms converge or even merge. Like designers dumbing down design or game elements to the common denominator in order the transport the game to all platforms equally. Like one of the things that annoys me the most is that I often can't save anymore where I want. Back in the "good old days" I could place a savegame almost at any point in the game, giving me the possibility to play certain parts of the game again if I liked them or just to fool around a little and play with engine. Now I'm restrained by auto saves. And thats just a minor thing, what if some designer gets the idea to break a game into shorter periods to accomodate their mulitplatform titles to the usage patterns of mobile gaming ?

So what ? Steam has clear usage guidelines, it's not like they are hiding them or anything. If you don't like the Steam guidelines, don't use steam and keep buying physical games.
Which gets really hard with most DRM free titles usually only getting sold online and the "physical" game market pratically beeing swallowed by Steam/Origin/Uplay

I see Steam as a compromise:

- ok, you mostly get DRM

- you can't cheat and you have to be online sometimes even if you want to play offline

...  

So, it's still a pretty good deal. I can play games for very cheap, without having to worry about ordering them and installing them one by one from DVDs or something.
Wether this is a good deal or not is solely depending on your point of view. The problem here is, if I come to another conclusion, thats my sole problem as there are only some small players in the market (gog, HB, etc.) that want to pick me up were I'm standing.
I don't really get what people are complaining about regarding Steam.
Oh thats an easy one: if I decide at some point that I don't want to follow where Steam is going (e.g. change in terms of use), I have no other choice to abandon the games I bought as I am no longer allowed to login if I don't agree to them.
You don't get 75 millions of users if your service is crap.
I don't think anybody said that their service is crap in general, but more that their terms of use are. And there is my old math teacher makeing its way out of my subconscious: "Millions of flys can't be wrong, excrements are tasty" .Please note, that I don't want to imply that I compare Steam to excrements - they provide a usefull service afcter all, they just need to get rid of the DRM (IMHO).
 
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The problem here is, if I come to another conclusion, thats my sole problem as there are only some small players in the market (gog, HB, etc.) that want to pick me up were I'm standing.
Well if you run Linux you don't have so much choice:

- you use Steam

- you wait for the game to be available through a HB sale/offer

- You buy the game online directly from the developer (very rare nowadays)

So the physical games market is already gone for Linux. 

And Steam's offering > HB's offering, and some of HB's offering is only linked to Steam keys. 

GOG gave the finger to Linux users several times already, so it's not an option. 

So, as much as I'd prefer DRMFree games if I could, my choice on Linux is very limited. 

Oh thats an easy one: if I decide at some point that I don't want to follow where Steam is going (e.g. change in terms of use), I have no other choice to abandon the games I bought as I am no longer allowed to login if I don't agree to them.
Yeah, like every other online service out there. Nothing new under the sun. Consider that these games are volatile, and that you don't really own them. This being said, if Steam were to become evil in one way or another, they'd lose their business pretty quick. So usually it's a win-win proposition for users and Valve.  
 
And there is my old math teacher makeing its way out of my subconscious: "Millions of flys can't be wrong, excrements are tasty"
I was not saying "popularity trumps all", but my point is, if you have many users, and the user base is growing, and people are spending more and more money on it, it's probably because people are happy using it. So, there may be some negative points about Steam, but overall most people seem to view it very positively, so I wouldn't throw the baby with the water just because they have DRMs.  

And to make my point clearer: there's a bunch of games I would never have played (i.e. bought) if they were not on Steam in the first place. 
 
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Well if you run Linux you don't have so much choice:

- you use Steam

- you wait for the game to be available through a HB sale/offer

- You buy the game online directly from the developer (very rare nowadays)

So the physical games market is already gone for Linux. 

And Steam's offering > HB's offering, and some of HB's offering is only linked to Steam keys. 

GOG gave the finger to Linux users several times already, so it's not an option. 

So, as much as I'd prefer DRMFree games if I could, my choice on Linux is very limited.
In my opinon, you are worsening the situation you are describing by choosing Steam as source for Linux games. As the more success they have on Linux, the more confirmation they have that their market model is successfull. And the less they feel compelled to think about changing that.Of course you can decide (like wizbardstan for example) that you don't want to sit on the sidewalk and let everything go by, but instead try to change their model from the inside (sorry for simplfying wiz/b ardstands thoughtprocess). But I don't think that this will be successfull, as where no obstacle lies, there is no reason to evolve to overcome it. So the only solution I see is a though choice (and I'm a hippocrit as I actually "own" one steam game: Portal2): just don't buy games from them, even if that means that you have to pass on these titles.

Yeah, like every other online service out there. Nothing new under the sun. Consider that these games are volatile, and that you don't really own them.
While there are similarities, there is a small difference that is the deciding factor for me: I have local copies of the games, so if I decide to quit using the services of gog,Hb, etc. I can still use/install/whatever the games I bought.There may be the possibility that I copy the games from the local steam cache - but what to do with it then ? I could apply a crack - but that is no option for me (if I would not care about doing something illegal, I simply would get the game from some warez site).

This being said, if Steam were to become evil in one way or another, they'd lose their business pretty quick. So usually it's a win-win proposition for users and Valve.
I have my problems with the term "evil" this suggest some kind of inherent trait that just needs a chance to come out. But my point is that steam may decide on changing something I simply can not accept (like Origins "right" to search your computer for certain software). And that does not necessarily have to be something they are themselfs very fond of: think about publishers that want to protect their property even more and with Origin and UPlay very slowly (but steadily) increasing their share in the market, giving them more leverage to persuade Valve.

I was not saying "popularity trumps all", but my point is, if you have many users, and the user base is growing, and people are spending more and more money on it, it's probably because people are happy using it. So, there may be some negative points about Steam, but overall most people seem to view it very positively, so I wouldn't throw the baby with the water just because they have DRMs.  

And to make my point clearer: there's a bunch of games I would never have played (i.e. bought) if they were not on Steam in the first place.
That wasn't meant seriously (should have made that clearer), of course there are a lot of people happily using Steam, probably because they just don't care, but moreso because Steam offers great services indeed.
 
In my opinon, you are worsening the situation you are describing by choosing Steam as source for Linux games.
In MY opinion, you are worsening the Linux games market by refusing to buy titles on Steam, because they benefit to Linux as a platform. Valve gets some of my money because they support the Linux client and the ports, and the developers get some of my money too for providing the Linux support. They deserve it, and I want to encourage that (just like I encourage every Linux-supporting HB out there). As a gamer I want to get rid of Windows for gaming for good, and this is how I can "vote with my dollars". And I'm certainly not pass on games I want to play just because they are on Steam. 

As for "trying to change their business model from the inside", well Valve is actually competing against other players out there, GOG and HB, which both provide DRM-free games - so if it makes sense for Valve to go DRM-free, I'm sure they will do it one day too. By the way not all Steam games are crippled with DRM, it depends only on the publisher/developer. The Paradox games, for example, are not DRMed on Steam. 

While there are similarities, there is a small difference that is the deciding factor for me: I have local copies of the games, so if I decide to quit using the services of gog,Hb, etc. I can still use/install/whatever the games I bought.
Sure. It's a good thing. I'm not saying the opposite. But you can also understand not all publishers will accept that model anyway, especially for recent games (and especially AAA ones).  
 
You don't get 75 millions of users if your service is crap. 
Following this argument, you should be a huge fan of Microsoft. ;)

It's about the lack of alternatives and the fact, that most people never heard of the Humble Store, Humble Bundles, Indie Royale, Desura etc...

Steam had great advertising by forcing people in it with Half-Life 2 a very  long time ago (in fact already with the demo), that's all there is to it.
 
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But my point is that steam may decide on changing something I simply can not accept (like Origins "right" to search your computer for certain software).
Well, as I said, it's a compromise. You get easy-painless installation and maintenance of your games, but you get some of your rights taken away. If they take away more of your rights, then they will lose users, lose business, and they'll probably consider again whether they should have done it or not.

In the end it's about trust. I trust Steam way more than I trust Origin or XboxLive or PSN - because Steam is way more open and transparent about what they do and want to do, and so far they have always put the gamers ahead of everything else. "Family sharing" -> they got the publishers to accept that, while it may result in lower sales - doesn't it show that they really care about what gamers want ? 

Of course, who knows what Valve will be in 10 years ? I have no idea. But if they want to continue growing they should continue to focus on gamers first.

Following this argument, you should be a huge fan of Microsoft.
No, it's totally different. People use Microsoft by default, not by choice. Steam is a choice for every person coming on their service. Very bad example :p
 
Steam had great advertising by forcing people in it with Half-Life 2 (in fact already tith the demo), that's all there is to it.
When HL2 came out Steam was slow as hell and it was not practical at all to use it. It was better at that time to buy a CD version of it. Steam has grown a lot because of its large catalog of games, its frequent promotions/discounts, and an excellent service altogether. 

Nobody was "forced" to use Steam, let's stop this myth.
 
It was possible to use the CD version of Half-Life 2 without a Steam account? Even offline updates?

I would have bought it, if this would have been the case, have I been misinformed?

Last time I tried the demo (offline install) it prompted me for Steam activation.

How is this not forcing people into Steam?
 
Last time I tried the demo (offline install) it prompted me for Steam activation. How is this not forcing people into Steam?
This is specific to the demo.

Check wikipedia :

Half-Life 2 was simultaneously released through Steam, CD, and on DVD in several editions.
I played Half Life 2 on DVD, and I never had to install steam or anything. You COULD install Steam if you wanted to get updates, but it was never mandatory. Plus, if you played on PS3 or XBox360, you would never install Steam either anyway. 
 
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Ok, since I rarely buy games on release, I wanted to buy the Orange Box and try to de-censor it somehow, because the German version again is crippled as hell

but Steam is mandatory with this version. I never knew, that there was a Steam free version sometime somewhere and somehow I still do not believe, that today you could do all the updates without Steam.

The ability to remove the absurd censoring is a very important point here in Germany and one of the reasons, why Steam is not as popular here as elsewhere,

because you often simply can't do it while I can apply as much patches and hacks as I want on all my pure offline games.

German adults (yes, you still have to be over 18 to buy this censored shit) are not even allowed to see blood in many games here. -.-°
 
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