A Steam console?

[Weekend_Warrior]

Eventually, first-person shooters will fade out and then where will Valve be?

Having DOTA 2?

You think that would outsell a game like Madden or FIFA?

[Xeogred]

I would buy the shit out of a console made by Valve if it meant more first-party games by them.

I'd buy it if it launched with Half-Life 3.

You know the chances of that! ...

[GameMasterGuy]

That actually makes sense, though. "If you want to play HL3, you need to buy our console." They could make it a steambox exclusive.

[KDub]

I already have a Steam Box....it is called my Laptop

[Icedawg]

for some odd reason I'd be more open to buying this system than anything current. I miss the days of a ton of systems being available on the market.

[Weekend_Warrior]

That actually makes sense, though. "If you want to play HL3, you need to buy our console." They could make it a steambox exclusive.

Yeah. But they would sell a helluva lot less units going it on their own than they would if they were to continue to spread their games across 3 or 4 platforms - PS3, 360, PC... and possibly the Wii U?

Once again, this is why Sega will most likely never go on their own again.

[johnnyonthespot]

I had a similar idea like this once. Didn't really do much with it due to not having the knowledge for down to the board programming.

It would be a Linux system. Completely stripped down except what was need to run the dashboard and a few simple programs for certain games.

The idea would be simple. You buy this small box, hook it up to your TV, plug in any USB controller you wanted and play games. The system would recognize the controller and tailor the system to it so that it was easier to navigate through the menus.

The main purpose behind the system was to allow indy game makers to have a system to build their game on. With Linux as it's backbone, it would allow for most (not all of course) windows games through WINE, you could play flash-only games in a tiny stripped browser that would play through the controller by using programs like Joy2Key, plus it could support pretty much any programming language under the sun. There would be a download page where you could download other games that were available. The back system would be set up like Ubuntu or Mint Repos where the games would be tested first before being pushed out to the public.

I was going to have the dashboard be written in Python that way it's easy to skin with XML or to debug if there are issues.

Only big problem is it would be mainly an online system. Selling games on a USB flash drive and popping them into the slot would be a physical fix but also extremely expensive.

[kingbuzzo]

almost forgot about this

http://www.envizionsinc.com/evo2dx.html

[KDub]

The only way I would be down with this would be the following things

1. The system was both fully functional offline and online. If I could go buy Steam games at the store or buy them direct online as well as play all games offline without being goofy that would be perfect

2. It would need to be cheaper than just buying a nice gaming PC. Else, what would be the point?

3. It standardized the games. PC games have always had multiple options with tons of settings and even then still may not work with your specific graphics card or something else. If this meant that I could run a nice PC games without compatibility issues and they looked great and ran smooth, well obviously that would be awesome.

4. It was like a consolized PC that hooked up to my HD TV. It would have to come with a keyboard and a mouse and all games would be able to use them. If it came with a controller too that would be fine but mouse and keyboard is the way to go!

[BoringSupreez]

I like this idea very much (we haven't seen a new contender in the console races in over 10 years now), but there's never been room for four successful companies at the same time. If this comes out, someone's gonna have to leave within a generation. I think the SteamBox would hurt Sony and Microsoft more than Nintendo, so it'd be one of them. Hopefully, Xbox.