Yes. Glad to see this! Very promising.
Even if sales got down, that by itself, doesn't justify firing 25 people.
It's not like Valve has money problems, or has shareholders over their heads dictating what they should do with their staff.
Either way, salary reductions and layoffs are some of the least efficient ways of cost cutting...
There are many other ways one can cut costs, that will actually make a difference and if they don't you get to layoffs...
I think, that either they are shifting focus, or that it had to do with those people specifically...
It's not like Valve has money problems, or has shareholders over their heads dictating what they should do with their staff.
Either way, salary reductions and layoffs are some of the least efficient ways of cost cutting...
There are many other ways one can cut costs, that will actually make a difference and if they don't you get to layoffs...
I think, that either they are shifting focus, or that it had to do with those people specifically...
We don't know who owns the company.
A truly democratic company can only exist with shared employee ownership ... otherwise ultimately some of the decisions are going to be dictatorial and whatever the reasons I'm guessing that was true in this case.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
That's another consideration. Perhaps the people let go were objecting too strongly to the company focus on a Steam box or some other company policy.
Regards,
SB
Is there a statement actually indicating all of these people were laid off?
People don't leave companies just because they were laid off, and people aren't always fired because a company wants to reduce its headcount.
People don't leave companies just because they were laid off, and people aren't always fired because a company wants to reduce its headcount.
upnorthsox
Veteran
It could be a group are going off to form their own studio, this has certainly happened before.
LuckyGuess
Banned
Cool. Valve stands a good chance.
{Certainly better than the "Phantom" pc that was rumored during the previous PlayStation/Xbox cycle.}
Most common denominator, mean gaming design, might be interesting...
Valve setting a fixed benchmark for PC game makers to be optimized & support, what do you think?
{Certainly better than the "Phantom" pc that was rumored during the previous PlayStation/Xbox cycle.}
Most common denominator, mean gaming design, might be interesting...
Valve setting a fixed benchmark for PC game makers to be optimized & support, what do you think?
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
The infrastructure it takes to get into the market is enormous. No company with less than $10 billion in annual revenues can ever hope to enter the console market IMO. Even Nintendo is being squeezed out of the living room right now. 5 years from now it won't surprise me at all to see Nintendo games on Xbox One and PS4 and Android and iOS devices as well...
an ign guy on my twitter feed was hyping a super top secret "big reveal" next week.
he then said it was not game related.
the thing that jumped to my mind was steam box...
note, it's probably not steam box...
Edit: Ok never mind not steam box, at one point he said Xbox fans will love it...
He was really hyping it to, said he waited his whole career for it, it was so secret he got in a car that he didn't know where it was going to get to it, etc.
Said it will be revealed after E3. When things quiet down.
too bad it's not steambox
unless "xbox fans will love it" applies...which come to think of it it might. the original xbox and it's fans reminds me of a steam box.No Valve isn't going to get the same kind of retail distribution as Sony or MS overnight.
This is going to be a startup type of thing. And the best they can probably hope for is all the PC ports, none of the console genres.
So very light on platformers, sports games, adventure games and very heavy on FPS variations.
What would make such a product appealing is lower games prices and no online subscription fees -- basically none of the BS that all of the big console companies impose on you in one way or another.
This is going to be a startup type of thing. And the best they can probably hope for is all the PC ports, none of the console genres.
So very light on platformers, sports games, adventure games and very heavy on FPS variations.
What would make such a product appealing is lower games prices and no online subscription fees -- basically none of the BS that all of the big console companies impose on you in one way or another.
As much as I wish for another actor to enter the market, that could be Steam, I sort of agree with you, it is really difficult for Steam alone to pull that one, they need partners and I mean big partners.
I think it would almost take a osrt of "competitive' collaboration between AMD, Nvidia and Steam to get somewhere. Those three companies needs to free (even lightly) from the grid of the OS makers. I could dream of a world where supporting a specific version of Linux would be a shared effort between those (3) companies, where AMD and Nvidia would have the charge of the drivers development and developers support, Steam would fond the expense to keep the "front end /app store" up to date. Steam would let some of its margins to AMD and Nividia accordingly to their market shares.
There would be clear performances requirements for the low end (perfs requirement, amount of RAM, TDP 100Watts sounds right), all models should be APU/UMA set-up.
Whether you use ARM based (Nvidia) or X86 system (AMD) it would be transparent for the end user (games would use Open GL). The goal from a software pov would be have the easiest port as possible from the PC/PS4 and to end in that next gen ball park as far as perfs are concerned.
The platform would rely on no advertizing outside of the web, light on the web and word to mouth, would only be available online. The lower end would launch when the next node at a really low price without HDD (as geek have HDD in spare and/or want to chose their HDD).
Overall I could picture the thing having few features, mostly a real gaming devices for which the only critical feature is imo voice chat. I would make the OS foot print really light while gaming so the lowest end could starts with only 4 GB of RAM (think 256MB, 512MB at worse).
Like in the ps360 you could call a more full-blown OS but it would not be instant (at least not on the lowest end models).
Without an optical drive, an HDD, a reasonable TDP (@22nm) they could shoot for 199$ for he entry models, like for GPU nowaday every vendors could come with its own flavors (light overclock RAM or APUs, different cooling solution, etc.).
Anyway that is so unlikely to happen that I wonder why I spend the time to post it
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...nfirms-linux-based-valve-hardware-still-alive
That aside, Valve seem serious about this, which'll bring more PC fanatics into the console wars. I wonder if they'll go closed hardware, and what variations they'll provide? They could certainly offer different performance levels which Ms and Sony can't.
I disagree that the closed platforms can't provide grand unification. It depends on the openness of the platforms. eg. You can have a single Steam account across devices, download Steam games on mobile and PC. MS are pointing at the same for Live on mobile, and Sony could certainly do the same - you just need a network hook to access one's PSN details on a mobile. Developers are certainly free to develop what games across whatever devices with whatever crossover.
That aside, Valve seem serious about this, which'll bring more PC fanatics into the console wars.
I wonder if they'll go closed hardware, and what variations they'll provide? They could certainly offer different performance levels which Ms and Sony can't.
