@Daian To be honest,I don't know a lot about Steam or Valve, these were just concerns I'd have with any new player on the market. My concerns aren't with Valve: anyone who supports open source material can't be a bad person in my books. My concerns are with the external developers and Microsoft and Sony. Microsoft and Sony could pay developers to keep a game off Steam if they wanted to, anything to keep their console sales safe.

But I hope you are right, and with more than 50% of digital downloads, I hope Steam can break through traditional console gaming and convince developers to keep releasing games on Steam and not give into Microsoft or Sony's marketing antics.

The only way I can see the Steam Box really take off is if Valve pours absurd amounts of money into marketing and public relations (especially towards developers). Despite Steam already being a success, I don't know if Valve has the same resources as Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

I'm pretty sure Nintendo gets off easily since Nintendo develops a lot of their own big titles (Mario and Zelda), but Sony and Microsoft mainly rely on external developers. In the past few years, platform exclusives between PS3 and X360 have been kept a minimum and I just hope a new market player like Steam doesn't mean a reignition of the war for platform exclusives (which would be the complete opposite of their selling proposition).

Nonetheless, I admit I'm intrigued by the concept of Steam and if I could buy/build a decent PC and play all my favorite console games on there, count me in. I also hope Steam could mean the end of local releases (JP/NA/EU exclusives).