With the mediocrity of "next-gen" consoles from Sony & MS, I pray to the gods that Valve is successful in this endeavor.
Console stagnation harms all gaming.
Console stagnation harms all gaming.
That being said, I DEARLY HOPE I'm wrong.
I don't believe the management structure would cause any major issues. Generally a team is created to handle a project, and people not in that team really have no major say in what is going on.
There are "semi-equivalents" to a traditional structure. Teams have one or more Leaders that make or help make decisions for the rest of the team.
Once you get larger you do run into the case where a team is created that can force decisions upon another team to a certain degree. Such as if IT decides that your password should start containing two numbers instead of one, that decision affects everyone who uses those services. Don't like it? You need to get funding and support to setup your own IT for your team which most likely will not get support.
- http://games.on.net/2013/11/steam-controllers-will-only-be-m...
This seems smart to me, control the quality of the controller (as that seems to be the central point of the experience anyway), and since the box itself is just a PC let the existing boutique builders build the boxes.
I don't think it's fair to blame consoles entirely for the slowing rate of hardware progression--we've just reached a point of diminishing returns, where it takes more and more hardware improvement for less and less visible benefit. Compare the difference between, say, Quake and Half-Life 2 versus Half-Life 2 and Crysis 3--about the same amount of time between each.
But whatever it is, I do think reduced hardware development is good for the vast majority of gamers. The tiny group that is "hardcore", demands bleeding-edge graphics, and has thousands of dollars to burn every year might whine, but for the rest of us, the playing field is getting more level. I like pretty graphics as much as the next guy, but it's gameplay, not shaders, that make gaming fun.