Yesterday a rumor started which said Google was looking to purchase Valve Software, the makers of Half-Life, Team Fortress and, of course, Portal. While Valve Software boasts a 20-million unit sales on their archive of awesome games, what interest would google have in gaming?
From google’s own corporate mission statement: “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” How would gaming fit into the dynamic of organizing the worlds information?
Some have said they’d be interested in Valve’s Steam system for distributing games and products. That seems far fetched considering all the CDN solutions on the Net, especially those focused towards media related projects like Liberated Syndication (Wizzard Media), which we use to host our gaming podcast, or other video solutions which would fit more into the Google playing field (considering the large purchase of youtube.com)
Today, Doug Lombardi of Valve, pubically said that Valve Software is willing to be purchased but stated the Google rumor was “a bit of fiction.” (kotaku) While Valve Software has shown they can make awesome titles with stability and dedication, knowing their open to being purchased is slightly disturbing.
I’m always happy for those “little guys” that make it in the big world of cut throat game development, there is some satisfaction knowing the smaller developers are making big waves against publishers like EA and Activision. Valve has changed the way we download games electronically and continues to expand their dominion; if Valve Software was purchased by a bigger company, would we still get the same quality and innovation from the developers?
@Duke Nukem Forever review fiasco:
This one is almost ‘no comment’. The nasty side is what Jordan said (except foe Jonah I can’t yet distinguish your voices, sorry if I mix you up): they don’t mind blacklisting, they just don’t want it to be public.
@ Apple will be the games industry in 10 years:
You can even devise a control scheme for touch based interfaces, but!
Just like console controllers, a mouse and keyboard using player will best one using a console controller, in competitive gaming.
Jonah, I’m with you on the real books vs. kindle. Don’t get me wrong guys, that’s a device that I like, but it doesn’t hold a kandle 😛 to a real book.
@ No need for PS4, PS3 now hitting its stride:
Erm, hello, PS3 is hacked? Piracy will be as rampant on PS3 as is on PC? PS3 might become a very unattractive platform to develop for? (hard to code for it and with it’s DRM system exposed for all to pirate your product).
😀 Jonah, thanks for pointing out misspellings, it’s useful to me.
@Question of the Week:
I do care what it says in the review. I do want to read if a certain aspect is flawed: perhaps it is a feature that interests me, and in that case I’ll skip the game.
As for the score versus the entire contents, well, it actually depends on the value of the score.
If it’s below 5, then I don’t even bother to read the review. The score weights 100%.
If it’s up until 7, the score weights 50%. Above 7, it’s really up to the contents of the review, not the score: weight drops to almost 0%.
Just to let you know that things in Australia aren’t that bad. If one looks around abit you can get a good deal on games even if they are brand new. Granted prices have been $110 for some games but with some skill you can get it imported from the UK with shipping for nearly half the price. I havn’t brought a game from a major Australian retailer for some time now. Feel sorry for those who do ouch.