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This week Valve hosted the Steam Developer Days in Seattle, where game creators got hands-on time with the Steam Machines and Valve's innovative new controller, while lectures covered topics as diverse as user-generated content, VR and game economies - as well as developing and coding for the Linux operating system and the OpenGL graphics API. This last element is crucial - not just for the success of the SteamOS and its accompanying hardware, but for the long-term expansion of Valve's gaming platform.First, it's important to put the Steam Machines into context. The initial reveal at CES earlier this month didn't seem to impress too many gamers. The range of arguments pitched against the products revealed were many and varied: there were too many of them, they were over-priced, they were under-specced, they were ugly, there were few signs of the apparently necessary "consolification" of PC gaming beyond the already announced controller, and scant evidence of a "guiding force" from Valve in defining the new platform for the mainstream gamer.
In actual fact, what we are seeing here are the first fledgling steps of an entirely open gaming platform that will evolve into many different forms, with the living room console-style box just the first iteration of a post-Windows Steam system. It's not for Valve to decide what should or should not be a Steam Machine, it's up to the hardware manufacturers to do their best and let the market - the gamers - decide. Few, if any, of these machines will be commercially successful, but lessons will be learned and second-gen machines will be better, more powerful and inevitably cheaper. For its part, Valve has provided an operating system and the necessary controller, and as the agenda for the Steam Developer Days suggests, it's all about encouraging adoption of the Linux-based platform and the OpenGL graphics API.
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