During a panel interview at Sancta Maria College in Auckland, New Zealand, Newell was asked if “Steam will be porting any games to console, or will it just stay on PC?” 

Newell’s answer was surprisingly candid, as he replied that we would “get a better idea of that by the end of this year”. The tease elicited a delightful “ooo” from the crowd, and since the video was posted online by Redditor Odysseic (opens in new tab), the internet has gone wild with speculation.

Now the wording of both the question and the answer could be very important here. The audience member’s question can be interpreted to mean “is Steam coming to console?”, but you can also read it as “is Steam bringing any of its games to console?”. While the latter would be a big deal, the former would be an industry-shattering announcement. Of course, without further clarification from Newell, his answer has left many speculating. 

When it comes to the potential of games coming to consoles, Valve has only released one major title recently, the VR adventure Half-Life: Alyx. There’s a chance that this answer is Newell teasing a port of the incredible shooter to PS VR. Of course there is also the Valve-owned Campo Santo’s In The Valley of Gods (opens in new tab), their follow-up to Firewatch, which could also be getting a console port as well. 

As for Steam itself coming to consoles, it’s hard to imagine how it would fit into the current console ecosystem. Considering that Steam is a platform for buying games, it’s unlikely that either Sony or Microsoft would allow players to just install Steam on their consoles and bypass their respective digital storefronts, let alone the fact that there might be compatibility issues when it comes to games running on platforms they weren’t designed for. 

Odysseic has since posted more of the interview online (opens in new tab), where Newell talks about how Valve is working on updates for CSGO’s anti-cheat system along with new Team Fortress 2 updates. He also answers all kinds of questions about everything from his favourite games to brain-computer interfaces. His answers can be a little difficult to make out at times, but it’s all fascinating stuff.

If Steam does come to consoles, then Xbox and PlayStation gamers will want to check out our list of the best PC games to see what they can look forward to.

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The Steam Game Festival is a multi-day celebration where fans can try out demos, chat with developers, watch live streams, and learn about upcoming games on Steam,” Valve announced. 

“For developers, the Steam Game Festival is an opportunity to get early feedback from players and build an audience for a future launch on Steam.”

The most recent festival, the February 2021 Edition (opens in new tab), kicked off on February 3 and ushered in more than 500 games to try. Like last year’s lineup of Steam Game Festivals, it offered players a broad selection of demos from upcoming games, as well as tuning in to special livestreamed presentations and play sessions from the developers behind them.

This time around, however, Valve will reportedly use a “curation team” to “look at each store page, including any screenshots, trailers, and description in order to determine which games we will be highlighting during the festival”.

In related news, Valve recently, once again, smashed its own record for the most concurrent users on its Steam platform (opens in new tab) – only this time, it did it twice in a single day.

SteamDB reported a new concurrent peak of 25,415,080 concurrent users on the service on January 2, 2021, breaching the 25 million milestone for the very first time.

Just a few hours later, though – but still within the same 24-hour period – Steam beat that again with 25,418,674 simultaneous users, 7.2 million of which were actively playing at the time. 

Thanks, ResetEra (opens in new tab).

Looking for something new to get stuck into? Here are the best PC games (opens in new tab) right now.

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The Steam Lunar New Year Sale kicked off today and is set to run through Monday at 10 am PST / 1 pm EST / 6 pm GMT. Hundreds of games will be available for significant discounts throughout the sale (read on for some of our recommendations), and if you’re into decorating your Steam Chat or community pages you can also invest in some new Item Bundles from the Points Shop – packing in every animated avatar, frame, background, and emoticon that you can unlock during the festival.

You can pick the bundles up for Steam Points, which you can earn from buying games or by receiving awards on your Steam community content. Speaking of buying games, here are 10 strong selections to start with if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed by all the options.

• Ark: Survival Evolved: $49.99 $9.99 (save $40) (opens in new tab)
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon $59.99 $41.99 (save $18) (opens in new tab)
• Control Ultimate Edition $39.99 $23.99 (save $16) (opens in new tab)
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order: $39.99 $19.99 (save $20) (opens in new tab)
• Hades: $24.99 $19.99 (save $5) (opens in new tab)
• Doom Eternal: $59.99 $19.79 (save $40.20) (opens in new tab)
• Risk of Rain 2: $24.99 $19.99 (save $5) (opens in new tab)
• Disco Elysium: $39.99 $21.99 (save $18) (opens in new tab)
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy $29.99 $14.99 (save $15) (opens in new tab)
• Paradise Killer: $19.99 $14.99 (save $5) (opens in new tab)

Make sure you check out our guide to Steam Sale Dates to find out when the next big event is likely to arrive. 

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Smashing the previous milestone – which was set over the new year in early January 2021 – Valve’s current all-time peak concurrent record now sits at 26,401,443 people. 

Steam continues shattering its concurrent users records, right now at 26.3 million users! 🚀Previous record was 25.4mil on January 2nd. https://t.co/D6WDHbz0B4 pic.twitter.com/DSLzDfECPEFebruary 7, 2021

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Steam’s upward trend began in January 2020 when Chinese nationals began to self-isolate at the start of the COVID-19 crisis. On February 2, Steam’s previous record of 18,537,490 users – set in January 2018 – was surpassed (opens in new tab), smashing the existing record by an impressive 300,000 to peak at 18,801,944 players. 

It’s gone on to be broken several times since, including a weekend in March which saw numbers breach 20 million for the first time (opens in new tab), and then 22 million just a week later (opens in new tab). The latest record – which was set in January 2021 – stood at 25.4 million users.

It comes just a few weeks after Steam also hit a record-setting 120 million monthly active players (opens in new tab), and 31.3 billion hours were spent playing Steam games in 2020, a 50 per cent increase from 2019. Valve clarified that it was definitely the pandemic that caused the uptick in popularity.

“As many of you already know, this past year had more than its share of challenges, with everyone’s lives upended by the global pandemic,” reads Steam’s Year in Review blog post (opens in new tab). “While Steam was already seeing significant growth in 2020 before COVID-19 lockdowns, video game playtime surged when people started staying home, dramatically increasing the number of customers buying and playing games, and hopefully bringing some joy to counter-balance some of the craziness that was 2020.”

As we reported last month, Cyberpunk 2077 was the new most-played game on Steam (opens in new tab), briefly overtaking the likes of Dota 2 and CS:GO – an impressive feat, particularly when you consider it’s currently a purely singleplayer experience. 

Looking for something new to get stuck into? Here are the best PC games (opens in new tab) right now.

The post Almost 26.5 million of us were on Steam at the same time today appeared first on Game News.

GDC’s cancellation this year is at least in part responsible for the significant increase in available demos over the last Steam Game Festival (opens in new tab), which ran alongside The Game Awards 2019 in December. “With 40+ titles featured, the Spring Edition highlights an even larger selection of games from studios who missed out on the chance to demo their games at showcases like Indie MEGABOOTH, Day of the Devs, and The MIX during this year’s GDC,” reads the press release.

You can access the Steam Game Festival once it goes live here (opens in new tab), and you’ll have until Monday, March 23 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 5pm GMT to download any demos you fancy playing.

The Game Awards host and executive producer Geoff Keighley tweeted (opens in new tab) about the news Tuesday afternoon, adding that more “editions of the Festival” would be popping up year-round, and that work is being done to bring the content to platforms other than Steam.

We don’t yet know any specific games that will be included in the event, but you can expect some fairly high-profile demos for new and unreleased games to be available. Last year’s event brought along demos for System Shock (opens in new tab) (the Nightdive Studios remake), Moving Out (opens in new tab), The Drifter, and a bunch of others.

The Steam Game Festival: Spring Edition is another silver lining in the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Likewise, Dutch retailer Game Mania is planning to sell copies of Animal Crossing: New Horizons early (opens in new tab), and rumors are swirling that GameStop may do the same.

Barring any potential delays, here are the best upcoming games of 2020 (opens in new tab) and beyond.

The post The Steam Game Festival: Spring Edition gives you over 40 free demos for unreleased games, starting tomorrow appeared first on Game News.

Valve is partnering with hardware manufacturers to bring a range of Steam Machines into your living room, but first it wants you to beta test its own design. The company spelled out its long-awaited Steam hardware initiative on its website today:

“Entertainment is not a one-size-fits-all world. We want you to be able to choose the hardware that makes sense for you, so we are working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS.“

Before then, Valve will send 300 of its own kits to users in the wild. Valvedidn’t reveal their specifications, but the company did say users will be able to beta test “hundreds” of games running natively on the new operating system, stream the rest of the library from home PCs, and discuss their experiences freely with no non-disclosure agreements.

The prototypes will begin shipping out this year, but only to those who complete the Hardware Beta Eligibility Quest: join the official group, agree to the terms and conditions, get at least 10 Steam friends, open a public profile, and play a game with a gamepad in Big Picture Mode.

What about a controller? The machines are usable with mouse and keyboard, but Valve says it will “have some more to say very soon on the topic of input.” We wouldn’t be surprised if Steam Certified Controllers of some kind are the final Steam Universe announcement planned for Friday.

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“Next week we’re going to be rolling out more information about how we get there and what are the hardware opportunities we see for bringing Linux into the living room, and potentially pointing further down the road to how we can get it even more unified in mobile.”

Don’t put in that pre-order just yet. This is not necessarily a pledge to have a finished console out by Christmas. Just a firmer commitment to Linux by Valve, and an incoming roadmap to the possible release of the Steam Box. Or whatever it ends up being called. Still, more gaming options are always better than less, and there’s no company better placed to more interestingly disrupt the current status quo than Valve.

The post Valve to (finally) reveal Steam Box plans next week appeared first on Game News.

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While it might seem like the company putting games on Steam is a betrayal of its roots, it actually no longer has any direct ties to Impulse after the sale to GameStop earlier this year. Now, the publisher is unbound, and free to spread its games across the internet without an ounce of guilt. “With the sale of our former PC digital download technology to GameStop earlier this year, we no longer have any conflicts of interest in offering our titles to other digital distribution channels,” said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. “We are starting with Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity with other titles being made available over the coming weeks.”

And there are a lot of other titles to add, many of which could very well see a resurgence thanks to this move. Games like Demigod never caught on completely due to Impulse’s more limited user base (along with early server issues), but may very well flourish on Steam with its massive audience. Others, like Elemental – War of Magic, could also benefit from new promotion now that the launch issues are fixed. A first impression is important, and both of these awesome games had somewhat miserable ones. Now, with a new storefront, maybe they’re getting the second chance they need to thrive.

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