Valve’s currently holding an event in Seattle called Steam Dev Days. It’s supposed to be an off the record event for developers to talk shop and get to try out the Steam Machines and OS. Of course, that hasn’t stopped anyone from tweeting out interesting tidbits from the talks Valve’s been holding at the event.
Of note are a couple comments about exclusive Steam OS software looking like a very probable prospect. According to attendees, “there will certainly be experiences on Steam Machines that won’t be available anywhere else” and that such exclusives “will be natural and not forced.” This all comes after Valve has stated they won’t produce any such exclusive games for their operating system, though, so the onus is entirely on other developers to make the call.
This could be the point where the point of Steam Machine’s becomes clear, especially as the Steam OS’ game library grows. As a mere PC with a custom version of Linux, it’s a hard sell. Especially since you can easily hook up most modern PCs to a television. Buying a Steam Machine instead seems pointless in that regard, particularly when the list of supported games remains small, unless you buy one that already comes able to dual-boot Windows. The promise of exclusives, however, could be enough to sway people. Certainly would convince me. Only reason I’d pick up a Steam Machine otherwise would be to make easy use of the family sharing feature.
Also of note is the announcement that Steam Greenlight could be vanishing. The news came from Gabe Newell, who was quoted saying: “Our goal is to make Greenlight go away. Not because it’s not useful, but because we’re evolving.” What that means for developers looking to get their games on Steam going forward remains unknown, but hopefully it’ll be something more faster and reliable than Greenlight, which has been notoriously slow to approve games in the past.
