1up.com has an interesting article about the history of PC game packaging. The article covers the history of the packaging from jiffy bags back in the 80’s through various different shapes and designs in the CD-ROM era of the 90’s. While at first glance this may seem to have nothing to do with our chosen subject, a deeper look will show you where they end up at; Steam.
The article is worth a read, if soley for the nostalgia, but one thing it does show is that Steam is already etching it’s place in the history of video games, even this early in its lifespan. Steam is the future of PC game distribution, and Steam Report is here to report its rise to domination.
On a day of much Steam news (more to come…), we learn that our favorite platform for downloadable content was very nearly a totally different monster.
According to gamesindustry.biz Valve originally asked Microsoft and Yahoo (among others) to build their Steam platform for them.
They were rejected, and thank god. Anybody who has played a Games for Windows game that ’showcases’ Microsoft’s attempt to get acheivements and online multiplayer onto the PC will know that it’s not a patch on the platform that Valve has produced.
Valve’s VP of marketing Doug Lombardi had this to say:
“You know, we went around to Yahoo, Microsoft…and anybody who seemed like a likely candidate to build something like Steam,” he explained.
“We basically had our feature list that we wanted. We wanted auto-updating, we wanted better anti-piracy, better anti-cheat, and selling the games over the wire was something we came up with later.
“We went around to everybody and asked ‘Are you guys doing anything like this?’ And everyone was like ‘That’s a million miles in the future…We can’t help you.’”
All I can say is “Phew…”
