Gabe Newell's closed fears and a new light of Handhelds

Folks, it's been time since the passing of Steve Jobs, and yet someone is cowering in their boots not because of the loss of a visionary, but also the ideas of the future. That person is Gabe Newell, front man of Valve which owns the Digital Distribution service "Steam." His fear is a Apple-only future that eliminates Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft from the books

Valve front man Gabe Newell fears that Apple will release new hardware that could render traditional gaming consoles obsolete. At least that is what he said during a game panel at the WTIA TechNW conference - as reported by the Seattle Times.

"I suspect Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people's expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear," said Newell.

Exactly. That means no new Super Mario Bros, no new Halo, no new Uncharted. The only new games you'll get are a new Angry Birds, and a new Cut the Rope. Who needs explorations, RPGs, Platformers and the like when cheap alternatives are the way to go.

But sadly, that isn't his only fear.

Newell also called the rise of "closed" platforms like Apple's iOS and Xbox Live "ominous."

"On the platform side, it's sort of ominous that the world seems to be moving away from open platforms," he said. "I'm worried that the things that traditionally have been the source of a lot of innovation are going - there's going to be an attempt to close those off so somebody will say 'I'm tired of competing with Google, I'm tired of competing with Facebook, I'll apply a console model and exclude the competitors I don't like from my world.'

"They build a shiny sparkling thing that attracts users and then they control people's access to those things."

But of course. Companies are doing more and more to compete with each other, Gabe. It's called the free market. Then again, this is coming from a company with a similar setup for Steam on a Microsoft Windows computer. Who says "Open Source" is number 1 never sold their soul like they're suppose to...

Unfortunately, I have to move away from the bad news to get to the...uggh...good news. It seems Apple's master plan to wipe handheld gaming off the earth has hit a roadblock according to this NPD report from Gamasutra

The growth of U.S. children aged 2 to 17 years old has increased by 12.68 percent, far outstripping the 1.54 percent population growth of that same age group, according to a new report from The NPD Group.

In the market research firm's latest report, According to Kids and Gaming 2011, which surveyed 4,136 individuals, 91 percent of kids in that group, or around 64 million children, now play games -- a 9-point increase compared to 2009's numbers.

The segment of that group that saw the fastest growth was children who are 2-5 years old, which saw "an increase of 17 points in gaming incidence" compared to 2009. Other fast-growing segments include females and the 15-17 year old range.

And the platforms that have seen the biggest increases in gaming activity among 2-17 year olds are mobile devices (up from 8 percent in 2009 to 38 percent) and computers. Traditional gaming handhelds, though, grew to only 45 percent from 38 percent.

NPD attributes the remarkable growth of younger players on mobile platforms to the availability of new devices on the market like tablets and iOS/Android-based smartphones, as well as huge increase in both free and paid content for those devices.

Despite that growth, the firm says that kids and their parents spent over five times as much on physical games (across handhelds and home consoles) as they did on mobile games for smartpones and other app-capable devices in the past three months.

45 percent on Gaming handhelds compared to 38% on Mobile Devices. Apple, what are you doing? Why are you slacking off on the job and allowing Handhelds to continue their domination? You definitely need to take a few pages from Fox News Channel and rip handhelds, and Consoles and PCs while you're at it, and help usher in a new age closed network that clamps you all down.

Works Cited:
Game Politics
Gamasutra