Kotaku has a hands-on preview of the Steam Big Picture Mode, which will launch as a beta today. They discuss what this first step will and will not mean to PC and console gaming, and offer Valve's thoughts on how this may or may not lead to development of a dedicated Steam set-top box. Here's what they say to expect: "Here are the basics: this afternoon, when Big Picture goes live, you'll be able to push a button and turn Steam into an entirely new interface. It sort of looks like the dashboard on an Xbox 360, minus the advertisements and other clutter that can make that system so irritating to navigate. And it allows you to do almost everything you can do on vanilla Steam: you can buy games, browse the web, and even chat with your friends using the platform's standard in-game overlay." They also have this trailer showing what the new mode looks like.
Beamer wrote on Sep 11, 2012, 07:31: Even more important, all those people are still there and still want to make games. Do you think Erik Wolpaw, Mark Laidlaw, Robin Walker and Jess Cliffe are sitting around working on Big Screen Mode?
Well, who knows what they are ACTUALLY doing, but I assume at least a few of the people you listed are just sitting around, laughing maniacally as they roll in piles of money earned from poor saps buying TF2 hats. There's no telling if any of them have the desire or willpower to work on another game, really. How much would your mindset change if you can just sit around making millions of dollars from Steam itself, let alone nonsense like TF2 items?
I'd like to see a break down of who actually did what for the various absorbed mods turned games, aka Left 4 Dead, Portal Series, etc. Obviously Valve's art/sound people had a lot of work to do, but coding, design? It'd be interesting at the very least.
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