Hasta La Gadget!

If you get stuck on a game, there are resources everywhere you can use to get back on track. You could hunt down a walkthrough on the Internet, visit YouTube to see if someone has posted a video that can help, or you can even head out to your local game store and pick up a physical guide if you want. Valve has decided to tackle this realm of the gaming universe as well, launching a Steam Game Guides beta as part of the Steam Community beta.

Yes, that means we’ve got a beta within a beta on our hands folks. Starting today, those who are in the Steam Community Beta can whip up a game guide of their own, which other Steam users can use as a resource to get through particularly tricky parts of a game. It seems pretty straightforward in that you can upload your own images or use screenshots you already have saved to Steam Cloud. You can also place YouTube videos in your guide if you happen to be one of those YouTube Gamemasters we mentioned earlier.

When your guide is done, all you need to do is hit the publish button and it will go live for the entire Steam Community to see. Game Guide tabs can be found in a title’s Game Hub, with guides for some of Steam’s more popular games already live. A word of warning though: the community can comment on game guides, so if you post one that’s sub-par, don’t be surprised if you get a little bit of backlash for some users.

It’s an interesting idea, but since some other websites like GameFAQs have this whole walkthrough thing on lock down, it doesn’t really seem all that necessary. We’ll have to see what Valve does with Game Guides as the beta rolls on, and what the feature looks like when it launches for everyone at a yet-undetermined date. Do you think this is a good idea, or will you go somewhere else for your tips and tricks?

[via Steam]

Steam Game Guides launch as part of Community beta is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

I don’t normally expect much to come out of Spike TV’s annual Video Game Awards, but Kotaku managed to score a gem of an interview with Valve co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell earlier this weekend. In his brief exchange, Newell said he expected to see several PC makers crafting Steam-centric gaming PCs for the living room in 2013, and that their products would rival the next generation Xbox and PlayStation.

Newell’s remarks come just days after Valve officially rolled out Steam’s new Big Picture mode to the masses. As the name sort of implies, the new feature (which has been puttering around in beta since September) swaps the traditional Steam interface with a bigger, simpler UI meant for use on televisions and other large displays. Naturally, expect to see this feature get some major play once those living-room PCs finally reach the light of day.

Curiously enough, Newell also repeatedly referred to Valve’s own hardware plans, though it may not have been what some of us were expecting. Rumblings of a Valve hardware play have been making the rounds for months now — indeed, an earlier report from The Verge speculated that the so-called Steam Box could make its official debut at GDC 2012, but the event came and went without any official word on the matter. Naturally, Newell didn’t delve into anything like hardware specifics, but did note that Valve’s potential computing package would be “a very controlled environment.”

Regardless of Valve’s current hardware ambitions, Newell’s comment raises some meaty questions. Will these custom-crafted PCs actually be able to loosen the stranglehold that modern consoles have on the living room experience? Or, better yet, are they actually even intended to? It’s probably way too early to pass any sort of judgment on these things, but I’m still leaning toward “no.”

Sure, modern PC hardware configurations have made it easier than ever to slot a computer into a home entertainment system, but I still don’t know too many people who have gone to the trouble despite the lowering of multiple technical barriers. Even when I do see people around me linking PCs and TVs, it’s not for gaming — it’s for sharing photos and videos with the folks in the same room. That’s not to say that there’s no market at all for computers that cater to the living room (that’s a generalization that’s just a little too out there) but I’m very curious as to what Newell and his colleagues at Valve would consider a success here.

Apologies if I’m being a bit too cynical here (I’ve got a truly stupid number of unplayed games in my own Steam library), but in this ever-expanding war for your entertainment, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with leaving some boundaries left uncrossed. That’s not to say that companies shouldn’t give it a whirl anyway though; it just makes the outcome that much more interesting to watch.

Valve has been making a visibly deep push into the living room, but in bits and pieces — controllers here, Big Picture interfaces there. Company chief Gabe Newell may have just hinted at a more holistic, though non-exclusive, approach in the works. Chatting on the sidelines of the Video Game Awards, he tells Kotaku that any Valve hardware would involve a “turnkey solution” with a “very controlled” environment, not unlike a console. While that’s not necessarily the confirmation of the rumored Steam Box, Newell only stokes the speculation further through his eagerness to put Big Picture on Steam for Linux and get that much more control when building hardware. The game developer doesn’t see his company monopolizing couch-based devices should it get involved, however — he predicts more companies will be selling PCs in 2013 tailored for the TV in a way that would favor Steam. We won’t consider either a Valve-made gaming box or its third-party equivalents to be imminent based solely on award show banter, but the remarks suggest that at least one of the PCs is more than just a dream.

Filed under: Gaming

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Source: Kotaku

GAME is certainly up for trying new things after getting a second chance at life, and today it becomes the first store in the UK to offer Steam Wallet Codes for purchase. You can buy £5, £10, £20 or £50’s worth, and until December 7th, you can get a 33 percent bump in trade-in value, should you put the credit towards codes. Customers can also browse the entire Steam catalog on tablets dotted around the shop floor. While the vouchers will obviously make good gifts this holiday, and also appeal to those who don’t want Steam knowing their card details, we’re not sure how smart a move this is. We imagine there are still a few keyboard-and-mouse gamers out there who don’t use Steam, but once GAME shows them the light, will they ever set foot in a physical game store again?

Filed under: Gaming, Internet

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Via: VideoGamer

Source: GAME (Twitter)

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of partying with a bunch of my friends. All of them are pretty big nerds, just like me. If you’re a nerd too, you know that not much changes when a bunch of nerds get a few drinks in them, they just talk about nerdy things louder than usual. Therefore, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to hear that the Steam autumn sale was among the topics that came up that night.

“So what do you think of the autumn sale?” one of my friends asked.

“Not impressed,” I replied. The look his face indicated that he agreed with me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good deal as much as the next gamer, and I am always willing to spill some serious cash during a Steam sale. I went into the autumn sale thinking that I was going to be buying up games left and right, but we’ve now entered the final day of the sale and so far I’ve purchased two games for a grand total of $17.48. I’m in fine standing with both my bank and my girlfriend as a result, but I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed.

There have been some good deals, to be sure – earlier in the sale, Skyrim took the stage as a featured deal, and right now Dishonored and Torchlight II, the latter of which being one of my 2012 favorites, are both 50% off. The problem, though, is that there’s going to be another Steam sale in less than a month. It’ll be big too, as Steam holiday sales always are. The autumn sale just pales in comparison to the blowout events that the holiday and summer sales have traditionally been, which leaves me wondering why we even need the autumn sale in the first place.

I understand why the autumn sale exists – everyone is going nuts over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so Valve holds a sale of its own to net some of the shoppers who have cash and are ready to spend it, provided the deals are good enough. With the autumn sale, however, it’s hard to get excited in the same way I’m excited for the holiday sale. In fact, it feels like the autumn sale is intentionally watered down in anticipation of the incoming holiday sale. It’s shorter than its summer and holiday siblings, there aren’t any publisher catalogs on offer, and the discounts don’t seem as deep. So, what’s the point when the holiday sale is knocking on the door?

Maybe this is all in my head. Maybe the problem is with me and not with the sale itself. With the holiday sale on the horizon, I’m hesitant to spend money during the autumn sale because there’s a feeling that they might be even cheaper in just a few short weeks. Even if I see a deal I know is good on a game I’ve been wanting to play, I question whether or not I should take advantage of it since I know (or at least assume) I’ll spend a lot of money during the holiday sale.

I can’t be the only one who feels that way, can I? I’d be interested to see how many people bite during the autumn sale in comparison to the summer and holiday sales, because I would imagine that the numbers for the autumn sale end up falling short. Valve – and other digitial distribution platforms for that matter – have something of a unique problem here. Most retailers don’t hold a holiday sale on the scale of Valve’s, only hosting massive sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Since PC gamers are used to blowout holiday sales and therefore expect them year after year, it makes pulling off an equally impressive Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale a bit trickier for those in the digital distribution arena.

What about you – has this been a great sale for you, or are you like me and feeling a little underwhelmed at the end of it all?

Do we really need the Steam autumn sale? is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.