Apple is the biggest threat to Steam Box, says Newell

Apple is the largest threat to Valve's proposed Steam Box, according to a lecture by Valve president Gabe Newell at the University of Texas' LBJ School of Public Affairs.

"The biggest challenge, I don't think is from the consoles," Newell said. "I think the biggest challenge is that Apple moves on the living room before the PC industry sort of gets its act together," Newell said, according to reporting by Polygon. "The threat right now is that Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway towards entering the living room with their platform."

"I think that there's a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging - I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily. The question is can we make enough progress in the PC space to establish ourselves there, and also figure out better ways of addressing mobile before Apple takes over the living room?"

Despite many analysts predicting the death of the PC market in the face of tablets, Newell believes hardware vendors will find a way to leverage PCs for living room gaming.

"I think a whole bunch of hardware companies are going to be releasing products in the next 12 months - you'll hear it referred to as Miracast, Shield from Nvidia, or lots of other people," Newell said. "There are going to be a huge set of products that say, 'If you want something that's incredibly cheap, at a price point well below anything that consoles will be able to reach, you're going to take advantage of the PC that's running somewhere in your house. It's like one of those things where afterwards it will seem like it was very simple, when beforehand, everyone sort of denied that it was possible."

[Image via Wired]