Steam Consolidation - Good, Bad, Inevitable, or Impossible?

[TinCow]

I still think that the open nature and variety offered by PC's is its biggest strength, but that variety is disapearing. The next generation of consoles will only blur the lines more, and we already know how the business strategy is going to go. The PS4 will probably stick around for just as long as the PS3 did. The Xbox 720 likewise. It is unfortunate that PC gaming is held hostage to the hardware standards of a more static console business model, but its also not likely to change as long as it is generally easier, cheaper, and 'safer' (for your wallet) to game on Console. Especially if the the Playstation Store or the Xbox Live equivilent continue to evolve and mimic the Steam platform. The only way to push PC gaming into the mainstream is for Steam or some other DD conglomerate (but probably, almost certainly Steam) to mimic the reliability and 'safety' (for your wallet) of Consoles. Otherwise it will remain on the Fringe, for those can't get their preferred type of game on Consoles. I'll always be playing 4x games on PC, but the day they find a way to make those decent on Console, I'm out.

Honestly, I think all the platforms are merging. Consoles as pure game playing devices are dead. The current generation are already heavily used as multimedia devices and the next gen will be even more so. Consoles will essentially be really expensive media centers with a lot of versatility. That's a market where the main competition for Sony and MS is going to be Apple and Google, who are already carving out their own gaming markets with iOS and Android. In addition, all of these systems are moving towards compatible hardware designs. Apple moved to x86 years ago for everything other than mobile and the PS4 is going to be using an x86 chip as well. I'd be highly surprised if any Steam box wasn't x86 as well. As such, we're looking at a situation where basically every gaming device except the iPhone/Pad, Wii-U, and some niche devices (like Ouya and Vita) are going to be running the same hardware as we've got in our PCs. In short, it's all becoming the same and the days of proprietary hardware systems are quickly disappearing. That also means that the idea of a game being restricted to a specific platform is also disappearing. Every year consoles become less like consoles and more like brand name media center computers. At some point in the not too distant future, consoles will basically just be PCs that have been pruned and customized to increase their task efficiency and decrease their problem-solving. PCs as we know them today will continue to exist, but I think our current concept of a divide in gaming will be entirely obsolete. When that happens, Steam will be just as big a player in the console market as it is in the PC market (assuming it continues its current trajectory). It will be the iTunes/AppStore of gaming, regardless of platform.