Gabe Newell took an intelligent resolution of the COVID-19 crisis: already in New Zealand on holiday, she took the resolution to stay. New Zealand, as you may know, has acted aggressively against coronavirus with a total blockade that has paid dividends for the island nation: while we in the United States deal with the consequences of our unauthorized repression measures and early reopening, New Zealand is necessarily coming back to general and Gabe Newell is talking about holding a party of thanks. It’s much less difficult to take refuge when you’re a billionaire, but it’s even less difficult when you’re a billionaire in New Zealand.
All of this explains why, exactly, the director of Valve Corporation and one of the leading vital figures in the gaming industry have come to answer questions about what appears to be a relatively mundane New Zealand communication program. In this case, the console war was reduced to a rather undeniable question:
“This Christmas, PlayStation and Xbox are releasing new consoles, what’s better?”
“Ah, the Xbox,” Newell replies, with nothing.
The speed with which Newell reacts is remarkable, to be honest, but it’s not an unexpected response. As the owner of Steam, the most important market for PC games, Newell is decidedly a type of PC, so console warfare is not exactly your bridge of command. But in this world, Microsoft is the company that doesn’t over- Windows.
Beyond that, Microsoft’s next-generation technique is just Valve’s style. It’s about openness, compatibility and flexibility across platforms, the kind of thing that adapts much more to the world of PC games than to console games. Sony is rarely as intense with its walled turf as before (the release of Horizon Zero Dawn on Steam is proof of that), but it’s still much further apart from the global PC than the Xbox Series X. Game Pass could, in a theoretical sense, be perceived as a risk to Steam, however it’s been years.
PlayStation has its own multimillion-dollar game through its side: I doubt Epic’s Tim Sweeney will answer this question in a fairly straightforward way as Newell did, but he was also excited about the PS5. So don’t worry, things are the same.
I am a freelancer whose paintings have been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Republic, IGN.com, Wired and more. Canopy social games, video games,
I am a freelancer whose paintings have been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Republic, IGN.com, Wired and more. I sing social games, video games, generation and all that gray domain that happens when generation and consumers collide. Google