A week ago, the idea of a Valve-designed games console seemed to be little other than a science fiction “what if?” scenario for bored games journalists. Today, it seems like it’s actually happening, in some form. There’s been no official word, but equally nothing that amounts to a denial from the company itself – and more and more sources are crawling out of the woodwork to say, yes, this is happening.
But what’s happening? It’s pretty obvious that Valve isn’t about to start building consoles. The company isn’t in the hardware business and has no plans to be in the hardware business, which it has (politely, politely) implied to be a bit of a mug’s game. Right now, Valve laughs its way to the bank by being the dominant distribution platform (with a tasty 30% cut, or thereabouts) on hardware which is made by someone else – which must inspire green-eyed jealousy at Microsoft, Sony et al, since these companies have to sell expensive hardware at a loss in order to get that kind of cut off software.