Tag Archives: ValveSoftware

Valve’s Gabe Newell on reported layoffs: ‘We aren’t canceling any projects’

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Valve head Gabe Newell says the company isn't stopping any planned hardware initiatives, despite reports of layoffs at the company and the news that hardware lead Jeri Ellsworth was fired. In a statement issued to Engadget, Newell said:

"We don't usually talk about personnel matters for a number of reasons. There seems to be an unusual amount of speculation about some recent changes here, so I thought I'd take the unusual step of addressing them. No, we aren't canceling any projects. No, we aren't changing any priorities or projects we've been discussing. No, this isn't about Steam or Linux or hardware or [insert game name here]. We're not going to discuss why anyone in particular is or isn't working here."

When pushed, company reps wouldn't confirm or deny layoffs at Valve, nor would they comment on the confirmed exit of Ellsworth. Valve's big push this year is hardware, as evidenced by the company's presence at CES 2013 with a variety of living room PC prototypes, dubbed by many as the "Steambox." The company's also working on virtual reality and wearable computing technology -- we'll hear more about Valve's VR plans in mid-March at the Game Developer's Conference -- beyond its enormously popular game distribution platform, Steam.

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Now you too can watch Valve’s Gabe Newell and Bad Robots’ J.J. Abrams talk about storytelling

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For some reason or another, Valve head Gabe Newell and Bad Robot head J.J. Abrams' DICE 2013 keynote wasn't available via livestream or on Variety's YouTube channel last week. We're guessing it's because they're both such nice gents that they wanted to give everyone else some time in the spotlight first. Good show! That politeness period, however, is now over, as the 20-minute talk on storytelling -- which features examples from both Newell's and Abrams' work, as well as their influences -- went up today on YouTube. We've dropped it below the break for all to see. If you're anxious to get to the part where the two discuss plans to work together on movie and video game projects going forward, we'd suggest skipping to the last five minutes. Or you could read our post about it right here, should the other option be currently implausible from the cubicle you're in.

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Source: YouTube

Valve working with J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot on game and movie collaborations

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Valve working with JJ Abrams' Bad Robot on game and movie collaborations

Filmmaker J.J. Abrams (Cloverfield, Star Trek) and game creator Gabe Newell (Half-Life, Portal) just announced they'll be working together on creating movies and games, via their respective companies, Bad Robot Productions and Valve Software. "We sort of reached the point where we decided that we needed to do more than talk," Newell said of the partnership. The two were speaking at the DICE 2013 conference in Las Vegas, addressing "Storytelling Across Platforms: Who Benefits Most, the Audience or the Player?" After a half hour of speaking about storytelling in their respective mediums, Newell announced that the presentation came from an ongoing conversation between the two about storytelling. Today's news is the fruition of that conversation, with the two taking action.

Newell specifically said that J.J.'s team could craft a Half-Life or Portal film -- something we've heard about in the past, albeit not with Abrams attached -- and Abrams said that Valve could help create a game with Bad Robot. Interesting indeed! Of course, the two have their jobs cut out for them -- Abrams is currently working on both the Star Trek and Star Wars movie franchises, and Valve's got a new hardware initiative set to debut this year.

Gallery: Gabe Newell / J.J. Abrams DICE 2013 presentation

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Stay seated: Valve’s Team Fortress 2 ported to virtual reality

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Safetyproof your living room Valve's Team Fortress 2 getting ported to VR goggles

If Valve Software's Team Fortress 2 is anything, it's versatile. The company's demonstrating that versatility once more in porting the game to virtual reality goggles, which could result in some serious psychological trauma. Kidding aside, a Game Developers Conference blurb today revealed the internal project -- part of Valve's ongoing wearable computing efforts -- which says the talk, "will describe lessons learned from Valve's porting experience." In another talk, Valve hardware man Michael Abrash is diving into the possibilities he sees in the future of VR, as viewed through his own company's experience.

It isn't clear whether Valve is using the much-loved Oculus Rift technology (seen above); the notes of the second talk only detail a general exploration of VR's weaknesses and strengths as they pertain to current technology. One thing is clear: both talks aim to educate game developers on what some Valve employees see as a burgeoning new frontier in game development. We welcome this bizarrely sci-fi future with open arms.

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Source: GDC (1), GDC (2)

2013: The year that Valve attacks

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2013 The year that Valve attacks

I lost a bet with myself at CES 2013. In the gaming preview we published ahead of this week's big show, I wrote, "As per usual, the games industry and CES are acquaintances at best -- at least from what we've heard thus far. Perhaps this will be the year that bucks the years-long trend, but we're not betting on it." Wrong. Wrong. But hey, this is one of those, "glad to be wrong" situations. NVIDIA shocked everyone with its first Tegra 4 device, Project Shield, which is essentially NVIDIA's first in-house dedicated gaming handheld. Not only does it play Android games, but more importantly, it streams full retail games from your NVIDIA GPU-based PC, all on its high-res 5-inch screen. Heck, it even has Steam's Big Picture Mode built right in, allowing you to explore Steam and purchase games, as well as push them directly to your television (employing Shield as your controller).

And then Valve's internal hardware prototypes popped up, confirming what we've heard murmurs of for months: the company's head down on creating a PC for your living room. Not exactly shocking, but certainly exciting; the plans are still nebulous, but Valve's confirmed we'll see hardware in 2013. We even saw some third-parties stepping up with their own versions of Valve's initiative. Xi3's Piston is the first such creation revealed, though the company's staying tight-lipped about specs -- we do know that Xi3's working directly with Valve on its tiny, modular PC. It's barely 2013, and already Valve's Steambox initiative is dominating gaming news. Let's call it right here -- this is the year that Valve attacks.

Gallery: Eyes-on with Valve's Steam Box prototypes

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Valve hardware engineer Jeff Keyzer on Steambox: ‘It’s going to be different things for different people’

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There isn't a hardware standard for Valve's upcoming Steambox concept. While the goal of the initiative is to move PC gaming from the desk to the living room, that doesn't necessarily involve a single hardware standard or minimum spec, Valve hardware engineer Jeff Keyzer told Engadget in an interview this morning at CES 2013. "It's going to be different things for different people. We're interested in investigating an ecosystem of devices that don't necessarily have to share a common spec," Keyzer said. Nothing's set in stone, of course, and Valve's still very much in the exploratory phase of its Steambox push. "We're exploring the space, and trying to understand what the tradeoffs are and how that impacts the user experience -- what it's like to actually use this hardware and play games," he explained. Beyond specs, he pointed out that all the prototypes of Steambox on display at CES share one common feature: "they don't look totally out of place in a living room."

Keyzer and the hardware team at Valve certainly seem to understand the challenges ahead of them in 2013. In true Valve fashion, their approach to tackling those challenges lies in iteration and openness. "We're planning to be open and involve users, so I think over the coming year you'll hear from us, and it won't be this big secret. I really think that it's going to be quite open," Keyzer said. And there's that hardware beta we heard about last year, lest you forget.

Steam's Big Picture Mode -- a TV- and controller-friendly version of Valve's widely used digital gaming service -- is the first volley in Valve's big living room push. Keyzer pointed out that several devices already on the market are essentially doing what Valve hopes to do in the coming year with its own hardware. "There are a lot of computer manufacturers that are making computers like these now that you can buy presently and are supporting Big Picture," he said, referencing the three non-Valve PCs on display in the booth. "But we think that there's a lot of fertile ground for innovation and exploration in that area, so that's what we're doing," he added.

Gallery: Eyes-on with Valve's Steam Box prototypes

Continue reading Valve hardware engineer Jeff Keyzer on Steambox: 'It's going to be different things for different people'

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Eyes-on with Valve’s Steambox prototypes

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Eyeson with Valve's Steambox prototypes

The Steamboxes are here! Well ... sort of. The prototypes for various Steambox designs are certainly here at CES 2013, and we just spent a grip of time acquainting our lenses very closely with them. The devices range in size and form factor, as well as origin -- several of the devices we saw originate from Valve internal, but inclusions like Alienware's X51 and Digital Storm's Bolt were also being held up as examples of the ongoing "Steam in your living room" initiative (note: all the controllers are off-the-shelf Logitech wireless devices, not prototypes). The idea here, as Valve hardware engineer Jeff Keyzer told us, was to show off a variety of form factors for living room-friendly designs. We'll have more from our meeting later today, but for now you can feast your eyes on the elegant prototypes -- as well as Xi3's Piston, and the aforementioned other two third-party PCs -- that we'll be sure to see more of as 2013 goes on.

Gallery: Eyes-on with Valve's Steam Box prototypes

Terrence O'Brien contributed to this report.

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Valve engineer explains Steambox comments: ‘No current plans to announce anything in 2013’

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When Valve hardware engineer Ben Krasnow gave a speech at a German technology conference back in December, he spoke to the much ballyhooed "Steambox" concept we've been hearing so much about in recent months (among other, vastly different subjects). Following that speech, a report on Golem.de (translated at the Neogaf gaming forums) posited that Krasnow indicated a reveal of said Steambox at this March's Game Developer's Conference, or perhaps at this June's E3 gaming trade show -- but Krasnow tells us he didn't say that exactly. "With regards to the Steambox news -- there has been a lot of things stated in the media which I didn't say. For example, it's true that we are working on getting Steam into the living room, and are planning for a hardware box, but we have no current plans to announce anything in 2013," Krasnow said in an email.

"The box might be linux-based, but it might not," he continued. "It's true that we are beta-testing Left for Dead 2 on Linux, and have also been public about Steam Big Picture Mode. We are also working on virtual and augmented reality hardware, and also have other hardware projects that have not been disclosed yet, but probably will be in 2013."

Valve also chimed in with a boilerplate statement, which explained the company's presence at this week's big consumer electronics show. "Yes, Valve will be at the show to meet with hardware and content developers in our booth space. Many PCs optimized for Steam and Big Picture will be shipping later this year. We are bringing some of these as well as some custom HW prototypes to our CES meetings." We saw one such example of a PC optimized for use with Steam's Big Picture Mode last night in Xi3's Piston modular PC -- the first of many of these setups we expect to see in 2013. Valve continued, "These custom prototypes are low-cost, high performance designs for the living room that also incorporate Steam and Big Picture. We will be sharing more information to the press and public in the coming months."

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Steam’s Big Picture Mode exits beta with gamepad-centric sale

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Steam's Big Picture Mode exits beta with controllerbased gaming sale

Valve Software's celebrating the official launch of TV-based "Big Picture Mode" today, which enables Steam users to play PC games on their televisions with a user interface designed around the experience. As a result of the celebration, "over thirty" games are seeing prices slashed by as much as 75 percent through December 10th -- those games, as you might expect, are geared toward controller-based gamers. Should you wish to get in on the Big Picture phenomenon now that it's out of beta, all you've gotta do is sign into Steam with a PC or Mac connected to your television and click the "Enable Big Picture Mode" icon in the upper right hand corner. Not sure if it's for you? Take a gander at our hands-on from back in September to get an idea of how the service stacks up.

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Valve’s Newell says three different controllers are in hardware beta, already out in the wild

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Valve's hardware beta is apparently getting underway ahead of schedule, as a recent 4chan group interview with company head Gabe Newell revealed that the beta's already in user testing. Moreover, Newell says that three different controller prototypes are in circulation. He echoes Valve hardware engineer Jeri Ellsworth's words from earlier this year, saying controllers are yet another step in Valve's journey with Steam from desktop PC to living room. He also says that the options currently available simply aren't good enough. "The reason we're doing controllers is we didn't think there was enough interesting innovation going on."

We've yet to see any of Valve's hardware prototypes, but the last word was it shouldn't be too long before they're ready for consumption ... in one form or another. Be sure to let us know if you spot one!

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Valve's Newell says three different controllers are in hardware beta, already out in the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 10:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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