If you (along with many of us) thought that Valve would use SteamOS as an exclusive platform to launch a guaranteed hit such as, oh, Half Life 3, then here’s some bad news. Valve’s Greg Coomer has revealed to IGN that they won’t be releasing an “exclusive killer app for SteamOS” and although smaller studios may create exclusives for the platform (as can be seen on Steam already), the company doesn’t want to “artificially drive customers” towards its system.
“We believe that, in maybe five years from now, folks will find it a quite antiquated notion that you should assume that when you change devices or platforms, that you lose all of your other games and friends. We’re hoping to unify, to get Steam to be as platform and context agnostic as possible. You shouldn’t have to shed that every generation, or even slightly shed it.”
Coomer also thinks “It would be pretty silly” if a third party developer had “to limit their game to a certain platform”. According to Anna Sweet, working on Valve’s business development, third party developers should release their games to as many platforms as possible.
“Whenever we talk to third-party partners, we encourage them to put their games in as many places as possible, including not on our platforms. Because we think that customers are everywhere, and they want to put their games wherever customers are. That would go against our whole philosophy, to launch something that’s exclusive to SteamOS or Steam machines.”
Steam Machines will start arriving early next year, which will signal the true start of the Linux-based SteamOS’s run. Will you be picking one up, even now that hopes of Half Life 3 ever being released have been dashed further?