At the end of the day, Steam is the same thing as the Xbox 360 or PS3, from a business perspective at least.

Consoles are sold at a loss with the belief that game royalties, DLC, subscriptions, etc. will make up for hardware costs and then some. The hardware is just a gateway for a locked-down platform where the proprietor gets a cut of every transaction made over the platform.

Valve completely sidestepped the hardware and retail floorspace aspect of the traditional console sales model and delivered a platform straight to users' computers. Like Microsoft and Sony, Valve makes money from every game and DLC pack sold over their service, only Valve didn't have to sink billion of dollars into manufacturing and marketing an entire console to do it. Valve boiled away all of the extraneous stuff and focused on where the money's actually made.

Microsoft and Sony undoubtedly bring in more revenue from their respective videogame divisions, but Steam must have a staggering return-on-investment given that it cost virtually nothing to create.

"Hardcore" videogame consoles only exist because there are a few megacorps out there with enough capital to sink into making them. Given the enormous costs of creating the PS3 and Xbox, it strikes me as a horribly inefficient way of making money. Does anyone know if the PS3 and Xbox divisions are net winners for their respective companies yet?

Xenophon, for those unfamiliar, was an ancient Greek general best known for writing The Anabasis -- an account of the trials and adventures of The Ten Thousand, a group of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger. After he's killed in battle, the Greeks have to march back to Greece from deep within enemy territory. It's quite a thrilling tale with plenty of action and treachery. Surprised they haven't made a movie out of it a la 300.

If I was Mr. Xenophon, I'd rather go up against the Persians than the Scientologists :D In any event, he has an awesome last name.

UT3 is worth $12 and not a cent more, IMHO. I'll probably play it for a few weeks and move on (I purchased it during Steam's holiday sale and finally installed it to check out the update). So the cost/entertainment ratio is pretty good.

Truthfully, most games aren't worth $20, let alone $50. I was browsing Steam the other day and noticed that EndWar -- a months-old console port with an attractive 67/100 Metacritic rating -- is being sold for the same price as Empire Total War and Dawn of War II. Hell, you can buy World in Conflict Gold for $30. So why on earth should I pay $50 for EndWar? Don't get me wrong, EndWar could provide a few days of stupid RTS fun, but it's simply not worth the asking price.

Anyway, thanks to Steam, Impulse, Gamersgate and GOG, I can buy 5 (maybe more) games for the same price as a new one. Good games are always good, ya know? So not only are publishers competing with current games, they're competing with dirt cheap oldies, too.

Enough with the arbitrary $50 price point. Some games are absolutely worth $50; most are not.

Yeah, those 11 million WoW players don't count. In THE YEAR 2009!!!1 they'll all use WINE to play WoW in Ubuntu :rollseyes:

The Orange Box sold very well on the PC, according to Valve's Doug Lombardi, surpassing 360 sales. I'm sure Valve wishes they never wasted money on that whole Steam thing; it's clearly going nowhere...

And I'm sure StarCraft II and Diablo 3 will flop. Blizzard may as well throw in the towel.

Someone better tell Stardock that making PC games is a bad idea.

I also heard that Dawn of War II and Empire Total War are being canceled and removed from Steam in anticipation of the great Linux migration of '09.

FYI: PC games would cease being made if they were unprofitable.

But I agree: idiotic DRM needs to go and publishers need to stop blaming piracy for their inability to make good games. I own a 360, Wii, and gaming PC (that dual-boots Ubuntu) and have plenty of great games for each platform. You're missing out if you write-off PC gaming.