The Steam Box - The Verve interview with Gabe

Exclusive interview: Valve's Gabe Newell on Steam Box, biometrics, and the future of gaming | The Verge

Very interesting read.

Thoughts?

It was incredibly interesting and I have to say if Sony and Microsoft only release new boxes with more ram and better graphics cards and processors, they're going to be extremely outdated. Especially since I guarantee you, they're timing the official launch of this to coincide with Sony and Microsoft's next consoles.

His focus on biometrics and gaze tracking for input is much-needed. The big hindrance to PC gaming in the living room is the absence of a useful input. I've tried. All the time. I really have. But there's no comfortable way to use a mouse on a couch. The controller isn't viable for so many genres either because it's less fast and accurate as a mouse. Shooters only really clicked on console when they had auto aim. The less, the better, but you do need it. It's why playing a shooter with a controller on Big Picture right now is not viable, but biometrics and gaze tracking can fill in the gap.

I really adore their model of allowing third parties make their own Steambox alongside the official Valve one. This is the reason I don't like Apple products and I never realized it until yesterday that it's a problem with consoles as well - when you buy one, you can't install your own OS, you can't aggressively customize it, your stuck with the same set of parameters as everybody else and there's nothing you can do about it.

This really reminds me of what the PlayStation 3 could have been. You could install a different OS if you wanted, they had an official Linux distro, people were getting ready to let you get games this way, it had unconventional uses like Folding@home and the early round of exclusives really seemed like the opening act of something that had never before been possible for gaming. But instead, they decided to go after the Xbox crowd, so they cut the price, removed the features, and just focused on being a "me, too" 360. Any chance we had of having a full, true "next generation" was over before it even began.

So, yes, I'm excited for this thing. They totally addressed my concerns that Valve had nothing unique to bring to the table or that they just wanted the console money. The idea of letting users set up their own stores is mindblowing. So is the nvidia Shield multi-room use, being able to use it on any machine in your house, along with Big Picture being Bigfoot and the mobile version being Littlefoot.
I really can't see what else comes out from all this.

Just to specify, the PS3 never really had "real" support for a different OS. You could install Linux on it, sure, but that linux distro did not get decent access to the video card, for example. Additionally, the reason they cut that out wasn't in order to make it more like a 360, but because they were worried about people using it to hack the console to hell and back.

I used OtherOS myself, so you're preaching to the choir about its limitations, but when it began Sony had very close contact with the yellow dog guys, making it the official distro, and they had some big plans in mind, they said anything could happen but it just fizzled out. So yes, they did get rid of it to prevent hacks, but you had three years in the interim where it could've been something more. So to clarify, I didn't mean they wanted to make it "like a 360," but that they just stopped caring about providing an experience that goes beyond that. There's a reason its support ended with the cheaper PS3 Slim, it was a whole relaunch of their strategy for the PS3 going forward compared to what it had been before.

Thankfully, I don't think that could happen to a Steambox since any manufacturer could give it a shot with their own box. I'm really interested in seeing who gets involved and what they bring tot he table.