Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Valve Corporation

Is Valve Working On A Gaming Console Called Steam Box?

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 19:47:07 +0000

Bellevue, Washington based Valve Corporation is best known for their social distribution network known as Steam and for the Source engine used in game development. Recent rumors have been indicating that Valve is going to get into the hardware business. They are currently playing with the idea of setting up a set-top console that would compete directly against the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.

Valve co-founder was recently quoted in an interview with Penny Arcade as saying: “Well, if we have to sell hardware we will.”

According to sources with The Verge, Valve is supposedly working on a hardware spec and associated software that would make up the back-bone of a “Steam Box.” The actual console is expected to be made by a variety of partners and the software would be readily available to any company.

Meetings were held during CES to demo a hand-built version of the device to potential partners according to the Verge. The basic specs of the Steam Box would include a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and NVIDIA GPU.

Online Game Platform Steam Surpasses 30 Million Accounts

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:19:39 +0000

American video game development company Valve Corporation has announced that their online gaming platform Steam has surpassed 30 million accounts. This is the platform’s 6th year in a row of over 100% growth in unit sales versus the previous year. This year they have seen almost 200% growth. Part of this year’s growth is because of the launch of Mac OS X support.

Steam supports over 1,200 games and it is estimated that they have a 70% market share of digital distribution market for video games. Game publishing companies that use Steam include id Software, EA, Activision, 2K Games, Ubisoft, Sega, LucasArts, Capcom, Rockstar Games, and Square Enix.

[Joystiq]

Rumor: Google To Acquire Valve, Maker of Half-Life and Counter-Strike

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:11:34 +0000

Update: NO SALE – Valve says Google isn’t buying the company

The latest acquisition rumor is that Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) may acquire Valve Corporation. Valve is best known for the games, Half-Life and Counter-Strike. The rumor was started by “well placed sources” of The Inquirer.

Why would Google buy a gaming company? Valve has a content distribution system called Steam. Steam is a way to get download free and paid games to PCs and Macs. Access to this 24/7 online store saves consumers time from having to go to a store to buy them. Steam has about 15 million users that have access to buy 440 games according to TechCrunch.

This deal is completely speculative. Personally I don’t believe the acquisition will happen because I don’t see the synergy here. But The Inquirer has it’s sources and at one point I wrote that I did not believe that Google would buy YouTube. If the acquisition does happen, this blog post will be updated.