Valve allow you to get Steamy

Mike Bantick
Friday, 22 June 2007 09:08

Your IT - Entertainment

An online war is brewing between Microsoft and Valve for the online distribution of our PC gaming fun.

With Microsoft launching their cross-platform gaming service Live recently, a shake-up seems to have occurred within the industry.

Prior to Microsoft sticking their large bulbous noses into the business, Valve sat up on high with an online distribution system that, though maligned by some, has proven to be a successful conduit for big-name as well as lesser known gaming titles.

Steam, came unto it’s own during the release of Half-Life 2 in 2004, where the distribution service was used to trickle feed the popular application.

Since that time, Steam has gone on to offer a larger demographic pleasing stable of games from Darwinia through to Dark Messiah Might & Magic.

This July sees a major change to Steam with Valve offering a more personalised experience with the network; "This summer Valve will ship a major update to its online gaming platform Steam, introducing an advanced set of community features to more than 13 million gamers around the world.

"Beginning in July, Steam users can set up their own personal Steam pages and profiles, create and join groups, schedule games with friends, review who they've played with, see how well everyone played, chat with groups, chat via voice, and more. These new community services and features can be used with all Steam games, which include new releases and classic titles from leading publishers and independent developers.

Free of charge, the new community features will be accessible via the Steam desktop client and via the web."

This seems to be targeting Microsoft Live directly.  This online war could escalate, with consumers being the ultimate winner, and perhaps the losers being bricks and mortar gaming stores.