Steambox’s competition is Apple not anyone else says Newell

Gabe Newell says the Steam Box will need to be first to the living room so that it can build up enough momentum before Apple sets its eyes on the living room. He also believes the traditional consoles cannot compete with Apple.

“The biggest challenge, I don’t think is from the consoles. I think the biggest challenge is that Apple moves on the living room before the PC industry sort of gets its act together,” he told the University of Texas’ LBJ School of Public Affairs in a lecture.

“The threat right now is that Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway towards entering the living room with their platform. I think that there’s a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging – I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily.”

He also says that there are going to be a lot of products that will be available for cheap which will give people an incentive to buy them over the consoles from Sony and Microsoft which cannot hit that price point soon.

“There are going to be a huge set of products that say, ‘If you want something that’s incredibly cheap, at a price point well below anything that consoles will be able to reach, you’re going to take advantage of the PC that’s running somewhere in your house,” he said.

“It’s like one of those things where afterwards it will seem like it was very simple, when beforehand, everyone sort of denied that it was possible.”

What do you think? Let us know below.

Thanks, Polygon.