In an interesting interview conducted by Penny Arcade, Valve’s Gabe Newell has explained that future console platforms need to be more “open” and “embrace inventiveness”.
Gabe was asked by PA what he thought would be important when it came to the next iterations of the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii and his answer was clear; flexibility to embrace new innovations.
“If you look at within the game space and you look at where a lot of the interesting things happening whether it’s World of Warcraft, whether it’s Facebook and social games, whether it’s innovations in things like free-to-play, they happen where people can experiment and do different things and they don’t happen in places where there are rigid, enclosed rules that restrict people,” explained Valve’s managing director and public figurehead.
“You know, we still don’t have World of Warcraft on consoles and as a World of Warcraft player and as a console owner I find that super frustrating.”
“I think the same thing happened in the past with a lot of hardware innovations, so there was way more opportunity for – you know, Nvidia and AMD existed in the PC space and that’s why they end up, you know, rather than internally developed proprietary graphics solutions on the consoles, they’re all gone, everything in the console space is coming from the PC now, and I think that we really need to see the same thing in terms of just general attitudes about platforms and that whichever console vendor sort of embraces that, I think they’ll see huge benefits.
“It’s not the games that are out there today, it’s the games that we don’t – haven’t even thought of yet that are gonna end up being important. I would push them very hard to stop thinking of themselves as being a platform for everything that already exists and start betting on the inventiveness and the benefits that you would get by embracing a more open approach to the internet and game delivery and game business models and things like that.”
Mr Newell’s comments echo a sentiment shared by Double Fine’s Tim Schafer who, in a recently published interview, mused that Microsoft is risking an exodus of “real creative talent” due to how limited and controlled their Xbox Live platform has become – be it via releasing games online exclusively or putting out updates.
Creative people like the aforementioned industry legends don’t want to be hamstrung by antiquated corporate practices, they want to be free to innovate and forge new practices in the realm of video game development. This is why the PC platform will continue to be the trend setter for future gaming and why consoles will tend to lag behind, unless the likes of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo do something drastic to change.
Don’t blame us we’re just the messenger…
To read more of this fascinating interview conducted by Penny Arcade, click here.
Tags: Valve
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