Retail threatens to ban Steam

[Archean]

Insiders say Steam, run by US studio Valve, serves a massive 80 per cent of the PC download sector. And retailers preparing their own rival platforms don’t want that share to grow any more.

Some of the biggest PC games – such as Call of Duty and Fallout – use Steam. But retailers are concerned that selling games with the tech built-in pushes users towards only buying games via Valve going forward.

At least two major retailers will demand that publishers remove Steam from their games – or they will not sell them in any form.

“If we have a digital service, then I don’t want to start selling a rival in-store,” said the digital boss at one of the biggest UK games retailers.

“Publishers are creating a monster *– we are telling suppliers to stop using Steam in their games.”

I think it is more like that retailers are fearful about becoming irrelevant with regard to any form of digital media distribution. Personally, as internet penetration and subsequently quality (+speed) of the connectivity improves, I think they are destined to join Dodo in the list of extinct species anyway, only question is how long it will take this to eventually become a reality.

Edit:
Sorry I forgot to add the link while making that post.

 

[red1776]

I think you are spot on Arc, I defend their right to protect themselves from piracy, however I do hope they get some competition soon.

 

[Archean]

Couldn't argue with points you raised, I think even if they do get competition (which will be good IMHO as well), for now they are well ahead of the rest. Another emerging market is mobile gaming, obviously the prices in this segment aren't as high as PC, but that low price tag probably allow people to be bit more adventurous in trying things out.

By the way did you get to make the decision to buy that Android phone you were planning to?

 

[red1776]

I think they do a bang up job as well. that has a tendency to change w/o competition is my only concern.

By the way did you get to make the decision to buy that Android phone you were planning to?

Wow! what a memory you have. Funny you should mention that. I procrastinated on the new phone and tentatively have decided to go with a Windows phone. Any input Arc?

 

[Archean]

I think I've talked about it in another thread (but probably in the one you mentioned this, forgot the name ).

Anyway, I dropped my good old Samsung Omnia i900 10-12 days ago, and screwed its screen (an area of about 1x1.5cm turned white); so I ended up having to get a new cell (without any plans for doing so for near future :/ ).

I wanted a WP7 phone but as they aren't available here yet, I ended up buying the next best thing I could find i.e. GT-i9000 (Samsung Galaxy S, with Android 2.1 on it). Well the phone is pretty nice, performance is not bad neither is the build quality; and screen is the best you can get on any cell (I'd say far better than iphone). But the real major issue for me has been connecting it to my notebook; it worked alright few times, but after about a week today I tried to re-connect and it won't. So after trying for hours I just rolled back windows to previous restore point (as I am trying to avoid tinkering with registry, reason being unsure about Samsung Kies + MTP application registry changes). Lets see what happens now.

Samsung's WP7 offering will have same Super AMOLED touch screen, and roughly same specs, (I have no idea about the other competitive offerings) but having used Sony, Nokia, Samsung etc. I always tend to come back to samsung for better quality than others at given price points.

By the way I never had any issue connecting my smartphones with windows, and I've own about 3 WinMo phones (including Samsung) + Nokia smartphones (mostly E-series) over the years.

Edit:
System restore did solved the issue, but the weird thing is, the notebook in question was not used for the whole week, anyway .....

Not really I guess I spoke too soon ....... I think the issue is cell recognizes the USB cable as 'charger' instead of 'data cable'. Oh well, joys of computing, back to troubleshooting.

Furthermore, I've found equivalent WP7 offering from Samsung I was talking about, I may well end this Android affair pretty soon if these connectivity issues doesn't get resolved.

 

[Archean]

Update:
Well I've sorted out most of the kinks/issues including connectivity with PC(s), except one, on desktop when I connect it, it shows something in Korean then just goes away, however, I can access phone's storage without any problem. That doesn't bother me one bit thought, because if & when Froyo becomes available and I decide to jump ship, I'll rather do the firmware update on my notebook. Along with excellent hardware / Super AMOLED screen, I also noticed it has 5.1 channel audio ..... and the quality is simply excellent.

Though I still like the WP7 especially with the Super AMOLED screen samsung is selling with its offering (and there is no office better than MS office even on a cell) + OneNote ....... so as soon as the OS matures I may still switch phones