Gabe Newell says his PC components come from multiple manufacturers, an openness that...

[midian182]

What just happened? Gabe Newell, aka Lord Gaben, the co-founder and CEO of Valve, has once again been lauding his and our favorite platform: the PC. While accepting an award for the Steam Deck, Newell talked about the interoperability of the PC, a feature that he says allowed development of the popular handheld device.

The 40th annual Golden Joystick awards took place yesterday. The event was dominated by Elden Ring, which walked off with four awards, including the coveted Ultimate Game of the Year prize. You can see the complete list of winners and nominations at the bottom of the page.

It's not all software at the Golden Joystick. There's also a Best Gaming Hardware Category, which this year consisted of The Playdate, Steam Deck, Analogue Pocket, Backbone One: PlayStation Edition, Roccat Kone XP, and WD_Black SN850 NVMe SSD for PS5.

The Steam Deck didn't have much competition in its group, so it wasn't surprising to see Valve's device win. Newell accepted, taking the opportunity to talk about the openness and customization of the PC platform (top).

"On behalf of everyone at Valve, I would like to say thank you for giving Steam Deck the Golden Joystick award for best gaming hardware. So, on my PC, I have an AMD CPU, a Nvidia GPU, the PC's from Falcon Northwest, I have a Corsair mouse, I have a Logitech keyboard, I have a Samsung monitor," Newell said.

"And it's that interoperability, that compatibility, that openness that really enables products like Steam Deck."

It's interesting to learn that Newell has moved to team red for his CPU. Back in 2019, he was sporting an Intel i7-5930K in a PC also from custom high-end PC builder Falcon Northwest. No word on which Nvidia graphics card he now uses, but he'll have presumably upgraded his old GTX 1080 from three years ago.

Newell also highlighted Naoki Yoshida's acceptance speech at last year's awards. The director of Final Fantasy 14, an MMO Newell loves, talked about gaming communities, a sentiment Valve's CEO repeated.

"If it weren't possible, if we didn't have that gaming community behind us driving the entire industry forward, products like Steam Deck wouldn't be possible. So, in addition, I'd really like to accept this award on behalf of the gaming community," Newell said.

Elsewhere at the awards, Return to Monkey Island won PC game of the year, beating one of this writer's favorite games, Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters. Meanwhile, God of War Ragnarok, nominated in two categories, won nothing.

Here's the complete list of nominees and winners from the game awards:

Ultimate Game of the Year

• Elden Ring (WINNER)
• Gran Turismo 7
• Horizon Forbidden West
• Immortality
• Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope
• God of War: Ragnarok
• Return to Monkey Island
• Teardown
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3
• Bayonetta 3
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
• Neon White

Best Storytelling

• IMMORTALITY
• Return to Monkey Island
• Horizon Forbidden West (WINNER)
• NORCO
• I Was A Teenage Exocolonist
• Wayward Strand

Still Playing Award

• Genshin Impact (WINNER)
• The Sims 4
• Destiny 2
• Final Fantasy XIV
• Minecraft
• Fortnite
• Pokémon GO
• Apex Legends
• Lost Ark
• The Elder Scrolls Online

Best Visual Design

• Elden Ring (WINNER)
• Horizon Forbidden West
• Cult of the Lamb
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• A Plague Tale: Requiem
• Lost in Play

Studio of the Year

• Roll7
• Terrible Toybox
• Half Mermaid
• FromSoftware Inc. (WINNER)
• Interior / Night
• Tribute Games

Best Game Expansion

• Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker
• Destiny 2: The Witch Queen
• Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course (WINNER)
• GTA Online: The Contract
• Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons
• Total War: Warhammer III - Immortal Empires

Best Early Access Launch

• Disney Dreamlight Valley
• Slime Rancher 2 (WINNER)
• Dune: Spice Wars
• Core Keeper
• Vampire Survivors
• Gloomwood

Best Indie Game

• Cult of the Lamb (WINNER)
• Tunic
• Rollerdrome
• Dorfromantik
• Neon White
• Teardown

Best Multiplayer Game

• Elden Ring (WINNER)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenue
• MultiVersus
• Splatoon 3
• Tiny Tina's Wonderlands
• LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

Best Audio

• We Are OFK
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3
• Metal: Hellsinger (WINNER)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
• Gran Turismo 7
• OlliOlli World

Best Game Trailer

• The Callisto Protocol The Truth of Black Iron Trailer
• Goat Simulator 3 Announcement Trailer (WINNER)
• skate. Still Working On It Trailer
• Bloody Hell Hotel Reveal Trailer
• Time Flies Announcement Trailer
• Alan Wake 2 Reveal Trailer

Best Game Community

• Dreams
• Final Fantasy 14 (WINNER)
• GRID Legends
• No Man's Sky
• Splatoon 3
• Warframe

Best Gaming Hardware

• Playdate
• Steam Deck (WINNER)
• Analogue Pocket
• Backbone One: PlayStation Edition
• Roccat Kone XP
• WD_Black SN850 NVMe SSD for PS5

Breakthrough Award

Vampire Survivors

Critics' Choice Award

Elden Ring

Best Performer

• Manon Gage (Marissa Marcel, Immortality) (WINNER)
• Ted Rami (Travis, The Quarry)
• Dominic Armato (Guybrush Threepwood, Return to Monkey Island)
• Angela Bassett (Regalla, Horizon Forbidden West)
• Ashly Burch (Tiny Tina, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands)
• Christopher Judge (Kratos, God of War Ragnarok)

Nintendo Game of the Year

• Xenoblade Chronicles 3
• Pokémon Legends: Arceus (WINNER)
• Kirby and the Forgotten Land
• Live A Live
• Splatoon 3
• Nintendo Switch Sports

PC Game of the Year

• Neon White
• Return to Monkey Island (WINNER)
• Hardspace: Shipbreaker
• Teardown
• Total War: Warhammer 3
• Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters

PlayStation Game of the Year

• Gran Turismo 7
• Horizon Forbidden West
• Stray (WINNER)
• Elden Ring
• The Last Of Us Part I
• Sifu

Xbox Game of the Year

• Halo Infinite
• Scorn
• Grounded (WINNER)
• As Dusk Falls
• Sniper Elite 5
• Dying Light 2: Stay Human

Most Wanted Game

• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (WINNER)
• Final Fantasy XVI
• Assassin's Creed Mirage
• Dead Island 2
• Forspoken
• Street Fighter 6
• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
• Warhammer 40,000: Darktide
• Honkai: Star Rail
• Starfield
• Exoprimal
• Redfall
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Mass Effect
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2
• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Kerbal Space Program 2
• Dead Space

h/t: GamesRadar/PC Gamer

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/96749-gabe-newell-pc-components-come-multiple-manufacturers-openness.html

 

[hahahanoobs]

Elden Ring best Multiplayer?

 

[torchyear]

Kinda ironic how the PC open architecture standard emerged from the stuffy corporate entity that was IBM. Apple was the one with the hippie underdog 'for the people' vibe during the 1980s, and it's turned out to be one of the most hypercapitalist corporations in existence.

 

[captaincranky]

"On behalf of everyone at Valve, I would like to say thank you for giving Steam Deck the Golden Joystick award for best gaming hardware. So, on my PC, I have an AMD CPU, a Nvidia GPU, the PC's from Falcon Northwest, I have a Corsair mouse, I have a Logitech keyboard, I have a Samsung monitor," Newell said. "And it's that interoperability, that compatibility, that openness that really enables products like Steam Deck."

Yeah, universal PnP has been around for quite a while now.

(Despite the fact that Apple, along with phones, tablets, and laptops have been steadily chipping away at it)..

 

[USAvenger]

Best Multiplayer Game - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenue

Yeah, I'll take a small fraction of the revenue that Shredder and Co. have taken in over the years...

 

[loki1944]

Gabe Newel looks deceptively like Santa Clause.

 

[NumberSix]

Where are the most unfinished game, pay to win and most expensive to play awards?

 

[0dium]

Where are the most unfinished game, pay to win and most expensive to play awards?

That's a good idea actually

 

[BobHome]

Kinda ironic how the PC open architecture standard emerged from the stuffy corporate entity that was IBM. Apple was the one with the hippie underdog 'for the people' vibe during the 1980s, and it's turned out to be one of the most hypercapitalist corporations in existence.

And then, to stop bleeding $$$, IBM sold the biz to Lenovo.

 

[ChipBoundary]

Well, this just illustrates exactly what is wrong with the gaming fan base, enthusiasts, developers, and manufacturers. The Steam Deck is terrible, objectively. Yet, it gets awards? FromSoftware keeps getting awards and accolades for poorly designed games with cludgy, ridiculous controls that essentially makes the game unplayable.

This is just like the whole "can it run crisis" thing. Crisis was a poorly designed and poorly optimized game that used WAY more resources to accomplish the same level of graphical fidelity that other engines met or exceed with a fraction of the resources. FromSoftware games are difficult because they are badly designed. They aren't complicated, nor do the require any level of skill, they are just badly conceived so that the game controls so awful that you have to come up with ways to compensate for it.

And on top of that Elden Ring, a single player game, wins best multiplayer game? This is pathetic. Hollywood isn't the only place creativity and ingenuity are dead.

 

[ChipBoundary]

Kinda ironic how the PC open architecture standard emerged from the stuffy corporate entity that was IBM. Apple was the one with the hippie underdog 'for the people' vibe during the 1980s, and it's turned out to be one of the most hypercapitalist corporations in existence.

Capitalism puts the means of production in the hands of the people, instead of the government. It is the very definition of "for the people". Also, I think you drastically misunderstand Apples origins, business model, and founders. Everything they ever did was simply to rip people off.

 

[Gezzer]

Kinda ironic how the PC open architecture standard emerged from the stuffy corporate entity that was IBM. Apple was the one with the hippie underdog 'for the people' vibe during the 1980s, and it's turned out to be one of the most hypercapitalist corporations in existence.

But the reason that IBM went that route was less out of altruism and more just plain lack of vision and laziness. They only saw the PC as a product for "go getter" professionals that wanted a leg up at work with a file compatible home version of the IBM mainframes used in the corporate environment. So it was easier and cheaper to just use "off the shelf" components over anything built in house. The only thing that was IBM developed was the BIOS, and once companies building PC compatibles were able to backwards engineer it successfully, the whole PC market segment took off.

It's kind of how Windows was so much more hardware agnostic compared to anything Apple put out and gave it an advantage as well. Microsoft went that route to capture market share, and it worked. So much so that ever since they've been trying to put that genie back in the bottle and might finally do it with Windows 11. As for Apple's "hippie underdog" vibe? Job's might not of been the tech guru that so many attribute to him. But he was a marketing genius, knew who his target market was, less tech and more fad followers, and pandered to them to great success. Apple has always been hyper-capitalistic, they just enjoyed a really good PR department. Something Microsoft and IBM have never had.

 

[torchyear]

But the reason that IBM went that route was less out of altruism and more just plain lack of vision and laziness. [snip] So it was easier and cheaper to just use "off the shelf" components over anything built in house. [snip]

As for Apple's "hippie underdog" vibe? Job's might not of been the tech guru that so many attribute to him. But he was a marketing genius, knew who his target market was, less tech and more fad followers, and pandered to them to great success.

Yes, AFAIK IBM went open architecture because it was the only way they could break into the personal computing market within a development schedule of 12 months. Definitely not altruistic, and more corpo-pragmatic.

Re: Steve Jobs' hippie credentials: Adam Curtis did a great BBC doco-thesis in "Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" that proposed how the US boomer counterculture (that Jobs was part of) morphed into Silicon Valley philosophy through systems-network and ecology theory as a way to resist centralised control. The endpoint was that it just ended up creating new hierarchies of power.