1. Stream into Steam Although far form pristine in this battle Steam, a subsidiary of Valve promotes modifying their games. With the widespread dissatisfaction aimed at Microsoft and lack of innovation from Sony and Nintendo, Steam feels well placed to swoop in and change the game. Enter their innovative trifecta: The Steam OS, Steam Box, and Steam Controller. Steam OS This is important because of the fact that Linux is open source, and that not very many games are made for Linux. They are taking the gamble that they have a large enough fan group that will support them while they work to make games compatible. They justify this move because in making games compatible with other platforms the majority of the work necessary to make games compatible is already done. 2013's video game news has been filled with controversy over the blatant attempts to control how and where they play their games. Gamers have been forced to buy consoles filled to the brim with proprietary software Microsoft took an enormous amount of flak for their DRM policies on the Xbox One spec announcement. Steam box This is essentially a PC that has been streamlined and specialized for video games. The specifications on this console have not yet been released, but there are some features that have been The Box will have customizable options that can raise or lower the price depending on what you want it for. The video card types range from proficient to stunning. They will have to work very hard to keep these platforms competitively priced. Steam Controller This new controller has a more sensitive interface that mixes the sensitivity and programability of a mouse and keyboard setup and the ergonomic and simple interface of a hand held controller. This setup is useful on the developer side as they have more options and flexibility than the simpler current controllers. Players will have to learn an entirely new interface. They hope the new system will actually turn out to be better suited for gaming. Quotes “There might be over 3,000 games on Steam, but only about a tenth of those run on Linux. And besides Valve’s own games, few of them are the big triple-A blockbusters. Mostly, they’re indie games” “The physicality of buttons combined with touch and trackpad- style input was really where the sweet spot was,” “We’re used to thinking of PC as an area where lots of innovation happens in hardware all the time,” Coomer says. “It seemed like we should get involved in making that move forward.”

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