[Industry Thread] is getting better, unlike the Vita's outlook. Read the OP.

Sterica

Welcome to the Video Game Industry. This is for discussing the business side of the games market. This includes sales figures, changes in publishers/developers, goings-on with important people in the business, and similar things.

Behavior has been on the rise, but still not perfect, so consider yourselves on watch. Keep it up, and maybe we can relax things a bit.

Here's how it'll break down:

1. All infractions will be serious. We're past the point where minor infractions alone aren't enough, so maybe bumping things up will be a bit more effective.

2. The following shit will get infracted. This is not comprehensive, but it is most of the posts that we won't bother warning you about. Go directly to jail. Do not collect $200. Responding to any of the following is just as bad: it propagates bad behavior. Do not reply, even to yell at them to knock it off: you have a report button for a reason.
-Content-less posts: posts that are just a stupid image macro, YouTube clip, or other irrelevant meme will be treated in hostile manner. This stuff tends to get the thread derailed a bit and it isn't funny to begin with. Playful banter is fine, but here's a concept: joke around using the power of your own wit.
-Chatty Posts: Posts that are basically the digital equivalent of shooting the breeze. Telling people about your personal life, gossiping, and other shit that isn't even remotely on-topic. Even tangentially on-topic things like "Oh, I bought game X from this company we're discussing, and it is so cool!" is still a chat post. Do not reply to chat posts. Report it, and move on.
-Posting VGChartz: it's an unreliable source of data, and we don't need discussion based on bullshit figures. Read more here.
-Posting Lists: Holy crackers, IGN is doing their Top 15 games featuring Charles Barkley! Nobody fucking cares. This is brutally off-topic, a catalyst for shitty behavior, and breathtakingly irrelevant. Just to be absolutely clear: sales figures are not lists.
-Fluff articles from other sites: Yes, sometimes Kotaku or Destructoid will do a painfully stupid article about gaming snacks or something. This isn't really a thread for commenting on games journalism. If Kotaku went out of business or was caught selling reviews to publishers, then yeah it's a fair topic. Whining about how an inane article Kotaku pushed out, however, doesn't really add much to the thread.
-Backseat modding: Dictating what should and shouldn't be discussed based on your personal preferences. If someone is veering off-topic, then it's fine to give them a nudge so long as you're not a dick about it. If someone is blatantly breaking a rule, then report it. Yelling at them will just cause a fight which further derails the thread. It's an action wholly counterproductive to your aims. Don't do it.
-Console war crap: being a cheerleader for a company, piece of hardware, or whatever is a no-go. Shit like "lol sony" is an example of this.

Having said all that: do enjoy the thread. That is, ultimately, the goal of all this.

Henroid

Thread title is making me giggle. I can't believe Kaz Hirai said the Vita is doing as well as Sony expected. The messaging from the company has been "IT RUUUUUUUULES" for a year, but sales have been a flop, and now he says, "Yep, this is what we've wanted all along!" That guy is such a pisser sometimes, heh. :P

Athenor

Let's be honest here. How many companies are truly honest about their finances and how their products do? Sony is not in a position to show weakness of any kind right now, because they are on this downward spiral. Add to that the notion of saving face, and they are.. well.. in trouble.

It's a BAD comparison, I know, but I wonder how long it was before Nintendo admitted that the Virtual Boy was a flop. The Vita's selling better than that (though I'd love to see the sales data on both devices side by side), but I think that was the last high-profile major hardware developer handheld to flop. N-Gage notwithstanding, of course.

Don't get me wrong: I'd love to see them be honest, especially considering they've already done their harikiri by getting rid of Stringer. I just don't see it happening. Which is a shame, because I got to hold a Vita demo unit for the first time yesterday (lack of a car = don't getting out to stores much), and it was a very sexy, if large, machine.

Nocren

What about the Turbo-16 and 3DO, would those be considered flops, flukes or minimal success? Or are we just looking at consoles from usual suspects?

Athenor

Nocren wrote: »

What about the Turbo-16 and 3DO, would those be considered flops, flukes or minimal success? Or are we just looking at consoles from usual suspects?

Sorry, 3DO usually doesn't register with me for some reason - just not part of my experience growing up, I guess. No offense intended. But yeah, let's throw that on there too. I mean, the Vita has sold millions, so it's not like it doesn't have an install base... Everything about the product just seems to be mishandled in some way. (In my opinion, of course.)

Ziggymon

Nocren wrote: »

What about the Turbo-16 and 3DO, would those be considered flops, flukes or minimal success? Or are we just looking at consoles from usual suspects?

The 3DO had a worldwide sales of around 2 million although there are claims of 6 million sales from wikipedia but I wouldn't trust that.
The Virtual Boy had a total sales of about 700,000 in 12 months
The Vita has a total worldwide sales of about 2.2 million at the last Sony press release from 7 months release. Even though Sony claims the PSP didn't achieve that total in the same period, Sony failed to mention that the PSP wasn't released in europe until 6 months after the US release and 9/10 months after the Japanese launch.

Edit: The Vita right now is probably on the same sales targets of the Turbo-16 and the Dreamcast of both had just over 10 million unit sales in 3 years.

Nocren

I never had a 3DO for the record, just wanted all the possible data.

I just wonder what's going on in the execs' heads. I mean, you can only put so much spin on something before it just breaks apart.

Cade

Athenor wrote: »

Let's be honest here. How many companies are truly honest about their finances and how their products do? Sony is not in a position to show weakness of any kind right now, because they are on this downward spiral. Add to that the notion of saving face, and they are.. well.. in trouble.

It's a BAD comparison, I know, but I wonder how long it was before Nintendo admitted that the Virtual Boy was a flop. The Vita's selling better than that (though I'd love to see the sales data on both devices side by side), but I think that was the last high-profile major hardware developer handheld to flop. N-Gage notwithstanding, of course.

Don't get me wrong: I'd love to see them be honest, especially considering they've already done their harikiri by getting rid of Stringer. I just don't see it happening. Which is a shame, because I got to hold a Vita demo unit for the first time yesterday (lack of a car = don't getting out to stores much), and it was a very sexy, if large, machine.

Nintendo with the 3DS.

Iwata came out and said it wasn't doing as good as it should, apologized to the company, apologized to the people who bought the system and basically admitted they had to fix the situation they found themselves in. That lead to the announcement of the price drop by fifty bucks and Nintendo giving the original buyers of the 3DS the ambassador games which was a pretty big thing I thought. You never see companies do such things and the fact the guy was so honest about it and up front was quite frankly, refreshing.

It's why I respect the guy, he has a mind for business but he comes off so damn humble and nice too.

urahonky

Didn't he also take a pay cut?

vagrant_winds

Satoru Iwata and Shuhei Yoshida (the head of all of Sony's software development) are both extremly open and honest. It's honestly refreshing.
And yeah, Iwata took a pay cut.

Brainiac 8

urahonky wrote: »

Didn't he also take a pay cut?

All of the higher ups in Nintendo took a very public paycut due to the 3DS, Iwata took a larger paycut than the rest of them did.

Algertman

Iwata will be the main reason Nintendo won't go down with the ship when the industry takes a massive fall next gen.

Zephiran

The thing about Iwata is that while he may handily fulfill the japanese "Salaryman" trope, he's not actually what most people would consider a stereotypical "Suit". He used to be a programmer, and a rather skilled one at that. In a way he's a bit like Carmack but with a more low-key personality, and if the man would get fired and replaced with a "Suit" I'd consider it a great shame. That guy actually worked to get where he is, and I think he understands the industry quite a bit better than most of the other people with management positions in game companies today.

KiTA

"Used" to be a programmer? Didn't he personally roll up his sleeves and help code one of the recent Smash Bros games?

Cade

Didn't he also marry the old grouchy man's daughter as well?

Goes to show he's a smart guy.

Barrakketh

KiTA wrote: »

"Used" to be a programmer? Didn't he personally roll up his sleeves and help code one of the recent Smash Bros games?

He and Sakurai worked on what would be the first Smash Bros game in their spare time. Originally it had no Nintendo characters.

Brainiac 8

Not to mention he is one of the only CEO types that allow the outside person to get a look on what goes on within the company he runs. Things like his Iwata Asks segments are practically unheard of with major corporations.

Dragkonias

Brainiac 8 wrote: »

Not to mention he is one of the only CEO types that allow the outside person to get a look on what goes on within the company he runs. Things like his Iwata Asks segments are practically unheard of with major corporations.

Not to be all conspiracy theorist I would say that stuff like Iwata Asks is actually pretty clever.

You get to control what information is and isn't leaked out, while getting brownies points for being so "open".

Zephiran

Iwata Asks also tends to put some of the more "peripheral" development teams owned by Nintendo into the spotlight on occasion, and when they have a relatively high profile 3rd party games they like to showcase those too by interviewing some of the devs. I believe The Last Story is one of those games, but then again that game was something of a commissioned piece.

They really oughta put up and translate more of those, they're good shit. I don't think they're spoonfeeding you doctored information specifically, but they do tend to make you think a bit better of the developers because you can start to understand some of their design decisions when they explain themselves.

Xenogears of Bore

More Famitsu software comparisons

After 9 months (Dec Y1 -Aug Y2)

NDS: 6.2M
PSP: 3.1M
PSV: 1.5M

After 18 months (Feb/Mar Y1-Aug/Sep Y2)

PS2: 20.6M
GBA: 13.2M
3DS: 16.6M

Also the first president of NoA married into the family. Iwata was a programmer who rose through the ranks to become president of HAL and even as president of the company did in fact program from time to time.

Cameron_Talley

The best thing Hiroshi Yaumauchi ever did for Nintendo was making Iwata his successor.

shryke

CoH shutting down is still madness I can't wrap my head around.

It's got to be some sort of insane/stupid internal bullshit since all hints I've found are that the game was profitable, which begs the question of why you'd bother shutting it down.

Apparently CoH was actually still making a profit while other games like Aion were losing millions upon millions. NCSoft's official statement was that CoH "no longer fits in the long-term goals of the company."

I suspect that it's them further moving away from Western games. Guild Wars 2 will keep on trucking, but I expect GW1 to be shut down by 2014 and the upcoming WildStar is probably on the thinnest of ice.

"Moving away from Western Games" just ... doesn't make any sense given they just launched probably the most anticipated MMO of the year and it's most definitely Western. There's some piece missing here to cause this to make any damn sense.

And I can't see them shutting down GW1 just cause afaik the game takes ridiculously little server backend to support by design. Of course, they shut down CoH, so who the fuck knows.

Zephiran

shryke wrote: »

CoH shutting down is still madness I can't wrap my head around.

It's got to be some sort of insane/stupid internal bullshit since all hints I've found are that the game was profitable, which begs the question of why you'd bother shutting it down.

Apparently CoH was actually still making a profit while other games like Aion were losing millions upon millions. NCSoft's official statement was that CoH "no longer fits in the long-term goals of the company."

I suspect that it's them further moving away from Western games. Guild Wars 2 will keep on trucking, but I expect GW1 to be shut down by 2014 and the upcoming WildStar is probably on the thinnest of ice.

"Moving away from Western Games" just ... doesn't make any sense given they just launched probably the most anticipated MMO of the year and it's most definitely Western. There's some piece missing here to cause this to make any damn sense.

And I can't see them shutting down GW1 just cause afaik the game takes ridiculously little server backend to support by design. Of course, they shut down CoH, so who the fuck knows.

My best guess? Whether or not they were profitable didn't really matter much in the end if management "Decided" that whatever money they were making wasn't enough. I'd figure they just about broke even, but then they probably also wanted to expand and get even more profits. The money coming off of their existing MMO, CoH, may have been sufficient to keep the game and the dev team going, but it might not have been enough to hire more people to start on a "Newer, Better, Bigger" game that would presumably give them more money. They don't want to hire any more than is necessary - So what I think they did was scuttle the ship they've been sailing on for the last few years, and then cannibalize what's left of the team to form the basis of a new development team to make the new game.

I'm just speculating here, but that's the only way it'd make sense to me.

Astale

Following that logic, it would be more likely that they just looked at the numbers and saw that while the game made enough money to keep running, it didn't make enough to justify funding a sequel in their eyes. So, their choices were 1: Fund CoX2, which of course would be funding a new MMO with all the expenses and risks (not likely to happen given their status and the market right now), 2: Continue funding new small content for CoX1 (which is what they have been doing) for a small profit, but I'm sure more than a few people figured they could use the resources better elsewhere (there is a whole slew of things in business about how something that is profitable might still be a bad investment, short version being "the same investment would make better money elsewhere"), 3: Do what most declining mmos do and put it in maintenance mode (since it's hard to complain about reinvestment when you're paying peanuts to keep up the servers in the first place). And of course 4: Decide to shut it down within a few months all of a sudden.

Now 1? I think most people get why they didn't do that. 2? Well, it was working as far as anyone could tell, but it's also certainly not unheard of for companies to dislike that option, and with CoX as old as it was (by mmo standards) some of the execs might have been getting tired of putting funding towards it, period.

It's the skipping of 3 and going right to 4 that is leaving everyone scratching their heads.

Sterica

Cameron_Talley wrote: »

The best thing Hiroshi Yaumauchi ever did for Nintendo was making Iwata his successor.

No, I think the best thing he did was have Nintendo work on those newfangled "video games." Or tell a young man by the name of Shigeru Miaymoto to make a new arcade game. The dude also ended nepotism within the company, something that was fairly common in Japanese businesses at the time.

You have a critically poor understanding of the man's history with the company. Make no mistake: he was a cold, eccentric motherfucker (and we loved him for it), but he's easily within the top ten of the most influential figures in video games.

Sheep

He was the man behind Nintendo during the early arcade, NES, SNES, and 64 days, Nintendo's golden years.

He also picked Iwata, a guy who's been behind some fairly innovative products in a ridiculously stagnant market. Pimpauchi may have been cold blooded, but ask yourself if whether or not a majority RPG players fit the stereotype he mocked.

I may seriously dislike Nintendo, but I respect what they're doing. Someone's gotta be the first to introduce the shoddy yet ambitious technology that other people eventually improve on.

Sheep

Someone hook me up with the Pimpauchi pic, please.

Brainiac 8

Rorus Raz wrote: »

Cameron_Talley wrote: »

The best thing Hiroshi Yaumauchi ever did for Nintendo was making Iwata his successor.

No, I think the best thing he did was have Nintendo work on those newfangled "video games." Or tell a young man by the name of Shigeru Miaymoto to make a new arcade game. The dude also ended nepotism within the company, something that was fairly common in Japanese businesses at the time.

You have a critically poor understanding of the man's history with the company. Make no mistake: he was a cold, eccentric motherfucker (and we loved him for it), but he's easily within the top ten of the most influential figures in video games.

This. He is the dude that brought video games back to life after the Atari Crash. He also, as was said, gave Miyamoto the opportunity to be creative and thus was in a sense behind probably one of the most recognizable figures in entertainment. Like Raz said, he was eccentric and kind of crazy when it came to moving forward with technology at times, but between what he did during the golden years of Nintendo, and making Iwata his successor, he definitely deserves to be considered one of the most influential in video game history....as does Iwata and Miyamoto.

Henroid

We've been talking about the CoH / NCSoft-asshattery stuff in other threads, but the idea I've latched onto for being the reason why is the following:

Apparently MMO's that are shut down can be used as tax write-offs. NCSoft wanted to write off an MMO for tax purposes. Okay, so how did they choose CoH? Well the game wasn't popular to the Korean market. It had a stillbirth of a launch, and they never bothered with it locally. The game has only been a thing in NA and EU. NCSoft, being Korean native, probably axed it out of favoritism to their local market. Aion is shit in general but popular with Koreans. So they can't close that down.

Astale

Also, according to a few articles that have been written up since the announcement, apparently going F2P stopped the slow slide in profits for CoX, but didn't really raise them back up after a small initial bump. And the whole thing was pitched to shareholders as a way to make the game profitable (as a mainstream mmo) again. It failed to do that, so they may have just decided to act finally.

Now the abruptness of it, the lack of telling the dev teams themselves beforehand it seems, and the general way they've handled it has been awful. But if that's really how the finances were, it's not exactly a shocker they'd want out.
The other kick in the pants is that since the product would 'compete' with them, however small, if they just sold it off, it's going to get thrown in the garbage instead. Again, from a business standpoint that makes sense, it just kinda sucks.

plufim

Free to play didn't solve all their problems? But it's "the future"!

Astale

To be fair, it did help their financials by the reports, halting the decline.

But no, I guess not every F2P transition makes your profits double overnight like some games. There was an article right below it about how one of the TOR devs isn't sure that going F2P will increase overall revenues by that much. Seemed topical.

Henroid

plufim wrote: »

Free to play didn't solve all their problems? But it's "the future"!

It didn't detract either.

Cameron_Talley

Brainiac 8 wrote: »

Rorus Raz wrote: »

Cameron_Talley wrote: »

The best thing Hiroshi Yaumauchi ever did for Nintendo was making Iwata his successor.

No, I think the best thing he did was have Nintendo work on those newfangled "video games." Or tell a young man by the name of Shigeru Miaymoto to make a new arcade game. The dude also ended nepotism within the company, something that was fairly common in Japanese businesses at the time.

You have a critically poor understanding of the man's history with the company. Make no mistake: he was a cold, eccentric motherfucker (and we loved him for it), but he's easily within the top ten of the most influential figures in video games.

This. He is the dude that brought video games back to life after the Atari Crash. He also, as was said, gave Miyamoto the opportunity to be creative and thus was in a sense behind probably one of the most recognizable figures in entertainment. Like Raz said, he was eccentric and kind of crazy when it came to moving forward with technology at times, but between what he did during the golden years of Nintendo, and making Iwata his successor, he definitely deserves to be considered one of the most influential in video game history....as does Iwata and Miyamoto.

Oh, I completely agree with all of this, actually. I guess I really meant the best thing that he could have done to secure the future of the company was to choose someone that thought differently than him (in some ways, though not all).

EVOL

PAL Charts Week Ending 01 September 2012

NCsoft’s hotly anticipated MMO ‘Guild Wars 2’ debuts at No1 this week, knocking ‘Sleeping Dogs’ (-38%) down to No2. Released on Tuesday and benefiting from a long running pre-purchase scheme, ‘Guild Wars 2’ records the second largest launch ever for a non-Warcraft MMO PC title, behind ‘Star Wars: The Old Republic’. It is also the first PC-only release to reach No1 in the All Formats Chart since ‘Football Manager 2011’ back in November 2010. There is no change at No3 and No4 with ‘New Super Mario Bros. 2’ (-36%) flying the flag for 3DS at No3 and ‘London 2012’ holding on to No4, sales up 4% (perhaps boosted slightly by the start of the Paralympic Games). ‘Lego Batman 2’ (-12%) manages to climb one place to No5, but ‘Darksiders II’ (-71%) slides from No2 to No6. There are 2 more new titles that make the Top 40 this week: ‘Madden NFL 13’ new at No7 and Namco-Bandai’s JRPG ‘Tales of Graces F’ on PS3 new at No14. ‘Transformers: Fall of Cybertron’ (-39%) drops 3 places to No8, ahead of ‘Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier’ (-5%) which has never dropped out of the Top 10 since it was released 15 weeks ago. The Top 10 is rounded off by the return of ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’ (+84%) which is back in the Top 10 (up from No17) after a 3 week absence.

Top 40 Entertainment Software (All Prices), Week Ending 01 September 2012

GUILD WARS 2 - NCSOFT EUROPE
SLEEPING DOGS - SQUARE ENIX EUROPE
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. 2 - NINTENDO
LONDON 2012: THE OFFICIAL VIDEO GAME - SEGA
LEGO BATMAN 2: DC SUPER HEROES - WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE
DARKSIDERS II - THQ
MADDEN NFL 13 - ELECTRONIC ARTS
TRANSFORMERS: FALL OF CYBERTRON - ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
TOM CLANCY'S GHOST RECON: FUTURE SOLDIER - UBISOFT
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 3 - ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
MARIO & SONIC LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES - SEGA
DEAD ISLAND GOTY EDITION - KOCH MEDIA
BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY - WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE
TALES OF GRACES F - NAMCO BANDAI GAMES
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN - ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
LEGO HARRY POTTER: YEARS 5-7 - WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE
FIFA 12 - ELECTRONIC ARTS
BATTLEFIELD 3 - ELECTRONIC ARTS
CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS - ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
ASSASSIN'S CREED: REVELATIONS - UBISOFT
SKYLANDERS: SPYRO'S ADVENTURE - ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
SAINTS ROW: THE THIRD - THQ
THE SIMS 3 - ELECTRONIC ARTS
[PROTOTYPE 2] - ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
GRAND THEFT AUTO EPISODES - LIBERTY CITY - TAKE 2
THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM - BETHESDA SOFTWORKS
FORZA MOTORSPORT 4 - MICROSOFT
MASS EFFECT 3 - ELECTRONIC ARTS
SONIC GENERATIONS - SEGA
MARIO KART 7 - NINTENDO
SNIPER ELITE V2 - 505 GAMES / MASTERTRONIC
LEGO HARRY POTTER: YEARS 1-4 - WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE
WWE '12 - THQ
NEED FOR SPEED: THE RUN - ELECTRONIC ARTS
FOOTBALL MANAGER 2012 - SEGA
FIFA STREET - ELECTRONIC ARTS
GRAND THEFT AUTO IV - TAKE 2
SNIPER: GHOST WARRIOR - CITY INTERACTIVE
MOSHI MONSTERS: MOSHLING ZOO - MIND CANDY
RAYMAN ORIGINS – UBISOFT

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=488863


..next time i'll think it through before posting

Cade

Valve jumping into the PC hardware arena

A rather intriguing job listing on Valve's site for an 'Industrial Designer' shines light on the firm's disappointment with today's PC hardware, and suggest it will soon be taking matters into its own hands.

"Valve is traditionally a software company," reads the post. "Open platforms like the PC and Mac are important to us, as they enable us and our partners to have a robust and direct relationship with customers."

It gets more interesting from there. "We're frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space though, so we're jumping in," Valve declares. "Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven't really changed in any meaningful way over the years. There's a real void in the marketplace, and opportunities to create compelling user experiences are being overlooked."

The candidate is required to have "6+ years of professional experience shipping world-class, high-tech hardware products", and "confidence with 2D and 3D design visualization tools".

Valve has previously dismissed rumours that the firm is working on releasing its own hardware dubbed the 'Steam Box' - a console-like machine that would play Steam games and other PC titles on your telly with a proprietary controller and optional USB attachments.

But the rumored claims don't seem so far-fetched now, do they?

It really sounds like it.

korodullin

"We're frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space though, so we're jumping in," Valve declares. "Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven't really changed in any meaningful way over the years. There's a real void in the marketplace, and opportunities to create compelling user experiences are being overlooked."

Well basic inputs for PCs haven't changed in decades because there's been no pressing need for them to change, and I'm not sure how Valve would even go about evolving the input medium the way they seem to want to. Better PC-integrated touch devices? Dipping into the Nostromo market segment? I dunno.

I think anything would just feel kind of forced.

subedii

Cade wrote: »

Valve jumping into the PC hardware arena

A rather intriguing job listing on Valve's site for an 'Industrial Designer' shines light on the firm's disappointment with today's PC hardware, and suggest it will soon be taking matters into its own hands.

"Valve is traditionally a software company," reads the post. "Open platforms like the PC and Mac are important to us, as they enable us and our partners to have a robust and direct relationship with customers."

It gets more interesting from there. "We're frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space though, so we're jumping in," Valve declares. "Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven't really changed in any meaningful way over the years. There's a real void in the marketplace, and opportunities to create compelling user experiences are being overlooked."

The candidate is required to have "6+ years of professional experience shipping world-class, high-tech hardware products", and "confidence with 2D and 3D design visualization tools".

Valve has previously dismissed rumours that the firm is working on releasing its own hardware dubbed the 'Steam Box' - a console-like machine that would play Steam games and other PC titles on your telly with a proprietary controller and optional USB attachments.

But the rumored claims don't seem so far-fetched now, do they?

It really sounds like it.

What it sounds like is the stuff that Valve's been talking about (and constantly working with others on (Novint Falcon, Razer Hydra)) for years now. Which is alternative input devices and means of interaction, and means of interacting with and monitoring the player.

I do not believe this is about "Steam box".

Zephiran

It's gonna be a line of Steam-branded trackballs.

More likely to actually be a line of Steam-branded PC accessories. Possibly somewhat overpriced. Maybe a line of actual hardware components with "Compatible with STEAM"-stickers on them, somehow optimised for the Steam service in particular.

Rami

I'm going to go with definitely overpriced. All Valve's physically goods are pretty grossly overpriced. I'm interested to see what changing a mouse and keyboard in a meaningful way is going to entail, but I suspect I will be disappointed.

Cade

So basically most of you think they want to be the next Apple huh.