Day 27: Newsfeed: PSVita Specs, Gabe Talks EA, Bethesda Adopting Steam

Figured I'd start something more along the lines of news and information. I'll try keeping this regular. We're getting closer to the start of the big gaming season so there'll soon be tons of news and games floating around to try to contend with. Today, I'm looking at the ongoing Origin vs. Steam rivalry along with new details from Bethesda and the PSVita.

Portal 2:
In Valve news, remember that free Portal 2 DLC we should have gotten, enjoyed, and forgotten by now? It was originally announced at launch for a summer release. It’s due to come out next month which Doug Lombardi says is “still technically summer.” If you’ve been watching the weather channel or you just live in the South then you’d be hard pressed to disagree. The Portal 2 DLC will add new test chambers, leaderboards and a challenge mode for both single player and co-op. Did I mention it’s free?

Seal of Approval

Skyrim:
Speculation arose over whether or not Skyrim uses some kind of DRM laden system, namely Games for Windows Live due to the Games for Windows branding appearing on the box. As you may know there’s a slight difference between Games for Windows and Games for Windows Live. Namely, the former is a marketing brand similar to the old Nintendo Seal of Approval back in the day. The latter uses the Games for Windows Live client which I have a personal beef with and highly recommend avoiding at all costs.

At GamesCon, Bethesda’s VP of PR Pete Hines declared that Skyrim will use Steamworks rather than GFWL. While some will view that as a disappointment I believe most would see it as good news. Sure, Steam has DRM and all but the advantages of Steamworks can’t be seen as anything but an improvement. Cloud saving, Achievements, real-time patching, New Vegas was the first Bethesda title to adopt Steamworks (albeit it’s not fully functional yet) followed by Brink. Now Rage and Skyrim are being added to the list. Hooray for adoption!

PS Vita:

We have hard numbers on the PS Vita’s specs. The official link is below but here’s a few highlights: a 4 core CPU (800-2000MHz), 4 core GPU (134M polygons/s, 4Gpixels/s @200MHz), 5 inch OLED multi touch screen (960x544), 512MB main memory, 128MB VRAM, front and rear cameras running at 120fps@320x240 or 60fps@640x480, six-axis motion sensing and three-axis electric compass, built-in GPS for 3G version. It’s got a lot of stuff crammed in there. It looks like for all intents and purposes it could be used as a phone replacement. It also comes with Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and Foursquare.

http://us.playstation.com/corporate/about/press-release/playstation-vita-expands-its-entertainment-experience.html


EA vs. Valve:

Finally, you may know about the ongoing rivalry between Valve and EA. It all started with EA announced Origin, a new gaming service and storefront not unlike Steam, and began to stock it with EA’s titles. Then, EA decided to pull several titles from Steam and host them exclusively on Origin. EA claimed it was Steam’s fault, their terms not meeting EA’s interest. Valve claimed it was EA deliberately breaking away.

How negotiations really went down. (Valve is on the right)

Gabe Newell had this to say about it: The reason EA is pulling support is due to a “whole complicated set of issues. I don’t think Valve can pick just one thing and think the issue would go away if we fixed that. We have to show EA it’s a smarter decision to have EA games on Steam, and we’re going to try to show them that.” Interesting stuff, it sounds like what he says could be taken as either remorse or a threat. If Gabe were Italian, sitting in a chair stroking a cat then I’d be just a little bit worried Mr. Riccitiello.

Gabe Newell is serious business.

Back to the topic at hand, Gabe was asked whether customers should expect more games to be removed from Steam by publishing competitors. “Companies have to earn the right to install content on their customer’s PCs on a regular basis. The same thing is true of Steam. We have to prove we are creating value on an ongoing basis, whether it’s to EA or Ubisoft or whoever. We really want to show there’s a lot of value having EA gmaes on Steam. We want EA’s games on Steam and we have to show them that’s a smart thing to do. I think at the end of the day we’re going to prove to EA they have happier customers, a higher quality service, and will make more money if they have their titles on Steam. It’s our duty to demonstrate that to them. We don’t have a natural right to publish their games.” Well said. Steam has certainly earned the right to be on my machine and the biggest obstacle in front of Origin, based on community comments, is that lack of earned trust and respect. Few people are willing to trust Origin right now but hey, few people were willing to trust Steam when it first came out too. It was pretty disastrous. But they turned it around and there’s no reason EA can’t turn it around too.

The most speculated cause of this fissure between EA and Valve is DLC revenue. EA wants to sell DLC directly to their Steam customers as opposed to hosting content on Steam. The difference is anything sold through Steam generates a cut for Valve. EA wants to take 100% of the revenue. Now, is this lost revenue, plus the cuts on game sales, enough to warrant starting your own service? Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. However, all of Bioware’s games (property of EA) have had DLC, some of which was available for purchase through the game itself without any hosting by Valve at all. If this were really about DLC sales then couldn’t EA just replicate what Bioware has been doing and everything would be business as usual? To me this smells like bullshit and there are definitely other factors at work here. If you’ve read Origin’s ToS agreements then you’ll see in the fine print some rather shocking details.

That's it for now. I want to close things out with a trailer. This game has had a lot of trailers in recent months announcing new characters and showing off different facets of gameplay and the story. I think it's going to be an amazing game, and if it lives up to its predecessor it may be one of the best games ever made. Here's the newest trailer. Thanks for reading.