Hasta La Gadget!

Valve’s Steam service is popular, anyone who has a tiny bit of interest in gaming news is aware of that, but the company has revealed today just how popular it really is. Valve has announced that Steam now boasts more than 65 million users around the globe, and that the service has seen a 30 percent increase over the past year alone, that’s 15 million new accounts in one year. Steam has more users than Xbox Live, which according to Microsoft is used by 48 million people.

Steam is still far off from the impressive 110 million people that Sony’s PlayStation Network has to its name, but Valve’s service has continued to hold its ground and even gain substantially over the past year. This year also marks Steam’s 10 year anniversary of providing distribution and sales services to gamers. It now offers more than 3,000 games and software titles to its more than 65 million users. The company also details its plans for next year, it plans to expand Steam’s services and offerings by conducting Steam Developer Days in Seattle, Washington in January, 2014. Valve’s announcement of Steam’s impressive user stats comes shortly after the company unveiled its effort to push into the living room, an effort that includes SteamOS, Steam Controller and Steam Machines.

Valve Steam Now Has More Than 65 Million Users original content from Ubergizmo.

Back in September, Valve took the wraps off their new Steam Machines whose announcement was preceded by the company’s SteamOS platform. The idea definitely has potential and given Valve’s success and reach with their Steam gaming platform, we wouldn’t be surprised if both SteamOS and Steam Machines kicked off with great success. However if there’s one person in the industry that has their reservations, it would be John Carmack, who for those unfamiliar, is the co-founder of id Software, the company behind titles such as the Doom and Quake franchise.

When asked what his thoughts were on Steam OS and Steam Machines, Carmack stated that he was not convinced that Valve would be able to repeat their success with Steam, and was quoted as saying, “It still seems a little bit dicey to me, getting everything moved over to Linux, pushing from that side of things. If it was some other random company, I would be pseudo-scornful, but it’s Valve, so I’m not.” Of course with all things new, there is bound to be a bit of apprehension and skepticism, but what do you guys think? Will Valve’s SteamOS and Steam Machines be able to take over the living room, especially with the might of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo who are currently dominating that particular market?

John Carmack: SteamOS And Machines’ Success Is A Little “Dicey” original content from Ubergizmo.

This week the folks at NVIDIA have suggested that their developer program with the likes of GameWorks will not be limited to the likes of Linux, Android, and the like. NVIDIA made clear that not only would they be extending GameWorks support – developer tools for games, that is – for Ubuntu environments, but for […]

There’s a team of creators out in the wild this week showing off a pair of augmented reality / virtual reality glasses called castAR, a pair of glasses that’s set to make Star Wars a reality. The inspiration for this wearable piece of technology comes directly from the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope, […]

Valve may not be shipping its Steam Machine gaming systems to early testers until later this year, but you can already see what the Steam Controller can do thanks to a demo of the prototype. The non-final hardware has a simple four-button pad where the eventual controller will have a color touchscreen, but you can […]