Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Valve teaming up with Apple?
Does the lack of Team Fortress 2 updates for over two weeks have you thinking conspiracies? Back in March we highlighted an article about a rumored Steam console (link here). Well today Dealnews, our favorite PC/Mac game freebie site among other deals, talks about a possible Apple / Valve collaboration (link here). Steam is a powerhouse in the gaming sales and eclipses Apple's itunes service in that department, but a team-up of the two could mean a big upheaval and lots of innovation. Apple is developing its own television or set-top-box currently and a deal with Valve could fit right in with this.
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So Apple's plan to make money by sueing people is now discarded?
ReplyDeleteI really hope they don't team up with Apple, or at least I hope it won't affect TF2. They would probably ruin it.
ReplyDeleteThe whole entirety of Valve was on vacation last week, and it also takes them about a week to produce a decent sized update. Also, the valve box was debunked A LONG time ago. They said themselves that it was for testing a new steam UI for the PC.
ReplyDeleteI cannot imagine anything worse, Apple is a horrible company. This sounds to me like as usual, Apple wants to monopolize any and everything that possibly poses a threat to their great holy i products and their devout followers of nut jobs. Expect increased prices and sale prices on games to be at most 5-10% if Apple has their say in Steam prices.
ReplyDeleteApple won't be happy until they can brand the entire world with their overpriced electronics that offer little customization and basically borrow from everyone else and claim to be innovators for doing what someone else already did except with shiny metal for 5x the price. Apple constantly wastes the courts time with their frivilous lawsuits where they claim everyone is stealing their precious ideas as well (Like suing Samsung because they "copied" the iPhone - my Galaxy SII can do way more than an iPhone so I hardly see how...Apple gives themselves too much credit).
Gabe has always been about the customers, so I hope he's wise enough to see through any of Apple's trickery - they see people as dollar signs and that's it. I own no Apple products, and never will - there's no reason to buy overpriced electronics with such blatant planned obsolescence and locked down software and hardware when much more open source alternatives exist (Nevermind the fact that OS X itself is basically a Unix distro).
/Endrant
Bob: Apple makes money on the phenomenal margins it makes for its quality products. Lawsuits don't make recurring profits anywhere near the gargantuan ones Apple pulls in.
ReplyDeleteUnknown: well they're an innovator so I am not sure what exactly you would be worried about. If you're Microsoft and Valve indeed does team up with Apple then you should be worried.
Aedando: maybe you are correct, time will tell. People love to speculate about Apple and this story (or non) brings Valve into the mix.
Shintsu: like "unknown" you are clearly not a fan of Apple but their market cap is the size of a G20 nation for a reason. If they do something they do it with quality as is proven by their legions of satisfied customers.
I'm all for PC gaming, Andriods and competition to Apple's dominance, but you have to hand it to them because they know how to make great products.
Apple is fueled by insane marketing, I imagine any marketing student probably has Apple shoved in their face for studies constantly - since when you consider it Apple is able to sell people things for inordinately high prices with basically their brand name to be about the only reason why. Apple markets their lack of customization and openness to "simplicity" but it's still all a bunch of marketing hocus that people buy because they're gullible.
DeleteThe only thing I'll give Apple credit for is using marketing to create a cult of consumers who basically just buy everything they make so as to fit in with what Apple thinks is the ideal lifestyle (The whole iHome thing they have - where everything is white and contemporary modern). Apple users are often haughty about their choice to buy an Apple over lower priced equivalent non-Apple alternatives - the frequency of PC, Android, Linux, etc. users who do this is significantly less, and this is due to the influence Apple has over its devout followers. I have seen people who if you say something bad about Apple will defend it as I would say a religious person would defend an attack on their faith.
I'll just say I've never seen anyone get a tattoo of the Microsoft or Windows logo, but I've seen people brand themselves with the Apple logo. Some people have a devotion to them equal or even greater than a traditional religion (I've even heard of a physical "Church of Apple" though the location of it escapes me at present). For me, I'll buy what's priced well, relatively open, and utilitarian - all things Apple hates.
Apple is a movement, not a cult. None of their simplicity with macs really ever widely caught on until they got into music, and then the ipod/iphone. When they created "new" products that's where they have excelled.
DeleteI, like you, prefer open environments like PC desktops and customization, Android. However I think slamming Apple is missing the point. They will do well whether you like them or not, because they are a great and innovative company.
The only gripe I really have with apple is that their macbooks are complete rips... You can buy a laptop with windows 7 and better specs for half the price. Their desktop computers though are great.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, I would never buy an ipad or macbook. I can get basically the same experience spending half.
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