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.

Valve: no Steam Console planned

Rumors had been going around signaling that Valve might have enter the console gaming fray with some sort of Steam console product.  That has been all slapped down now at least for the foreseeable future here.  I never undersood this rumor since Valve has spent so much time making Steam into a cross-platform software "app".  What would they get into the hardware business for?  There is a lot of money to be made selling games via Steam and starting a completely new business by manufacturing hardware (at a loss most likely) didn't make sense.

What I can see is Valve teaming up with a Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox, or Nintendo Wii, the latter two most likely as Valve and Microsoft share the east side of Seattle as their home.  Nintendo has a presence in Redmond also but nothing like Microsoft's.  Time will tell

Get coal for Christmas : win!

Valve continues to mix it up with more holiday madness (link here).  This is less a TF2 thing rather a Steam contest where they give away things like games, coupons on games and more.  Now you can get coal in your steam account.  Rack 7 of them up and craft them for a special Steam gift.  Or hold on to them where each coal is an entry into the Steam grand prize drawing on January 2nd.  Merry Christmas indeed!

New poll, all about stranges

What will Valve do next?  We already saw that crate #29 was the first all-class crate of the strange variety so what will they come up with next time?  They had established a "3 crate, one class each" structure then threw that under the bus.  Are they going to eventually release all the weapons in strange varieties or are we going to see a set group?  They always do something unexpected so there is no telling.  Our best guess here at TF2S is that they have up to crate #31 with the all-class structure then there is an update that moves on from the strange weapons for the short-term.  Share your thoughts here.

New item percentages

In updating the TF2items hat and item percentages, you may notice that most of the items percentages have dropped by approximately half.  For example, Bills hat which was in around 20% of the backpacks is now at around 11%.  What gives, you say?  Well, as we've said before TF2items (and thus, we all are) is dependent on Valve for whatever data they give out.  The percentage drop is likely due to the influx of new players, and it would seem that the number of current players has nearly doubled since all percentages of items has been effectively cut in half.  This is reinforced by the Ghastlier Gibus percentages - cut in half also signifying that more than half of the active player base was not playing Halloween of 2010.

Of note, you will recall we ran a poll asking which stats you would prefer: percentage of items or estimated # of items.  We have gone through our channels and Valve will not give us the actual # of active TF2 players.  Sooooo...we are "stuck" with the better statistic which is percentage of items.  I know many of you really liked estimated #, however it is a severely flawed number and even moreso now that TF2items data from Valve keeps getting more limited.  If the number of players is ever released we will re-calculate an estimated # of items.

That said, if you think there are any other metrics that effect value and price that we should show in our little spreadsheet: let us know.  That is all.  Be well.

Steam Gameplay Statistics

In follow-up to the Steam Hardware and Software survey, this is a page we like to look at that shows gameplay and player statistics for Steam games (link here).  There are currently around 66,000 players in-game playing Team Fortress 2 right now.  Pretty remarkable for a "vintage" game like TF2.  It speaks to the game's longevity and Valve's continuous-improvement ideals.  You rock TF2.