Steam works just fine the way it is.
Back when Steam came online in 2003, most people thought digital distribution of games was a risky move. Valve blew that notion out of the water with a slick interface and easy management of your game library, not to mention all the social features. Services like Onlive and Gaikai that carry the burden of graphics processing somewhere else and only stream the video output to your computer might have been another leap in gaming delivery, but Valve has no plans to ape those competitors. Speaking at a panel at the Develop conference in Brighton, notables from Valve like TF2 designer Robin Walker and biz dev guy Jason Holtman said they like the way Steam works now. Streaming games is far from a priority for Valve.
“Those [game-streaming technologies] are really interesting to us, but they’re not in our short-term plans,” said Holtman. “We see lots of advantages in the way games work now”.
“We love cloud gaming and we think we do it already,” added Walker, citing the cloud saving feature and the ability to download games to any location using your Steam account.
“We’re not so excited by distribution,” Walker continued. “We’re excited by a change in customer experience.”
In other words, the way the game gets to the player in the backend is less vital to Valve’s model than ensuring a solid play experience.
I can get behind that.
Source: Gamespot
