Probably should have kept this under wraps until it actually looked like a 2014 that someone might want to play.

@fragsnipa Actually, if some company just made a great Freelancer 2 worthy of the title, I could easily forget all of these newcomers to the genre, especially with all of their dubious boasting about how great their alpha code is and big plans for the future.

Anyhow, I'm definitely in the market for a good space sim, so I guess I'll keep an eye on these two.

@daveydave400 Believe it or not, there is a single-player market for these kinds of games. I've been playing DOTA2 for months now, and I have never played with/against a human and have no interest in doing so. I really like the MOBA genre, but I really hate to be bothered with the online BS that you get from people who forget that it's just a game. I would personally have no problem purchasing a MOBA that had strong strategic AI and a good array of single-player modes and options (beyond just practice for multiplayer).

@decebal The dirty little secret regarding Steam is that on any typical day its games are actually more expensive than many other retailers. This is despite the fact that they don't have to worry about retail boxes or shipping through the mail. I'm a big fan of Amazon and buy 90% of my games from them. The other 10% I get through gog.com. I actually try to avoid Steam, though I have been sucked in by a summer sale once or twice.

@pohman @decebal Combat is tactical, where you'll have to pause in most hard battles and strategize. Like decebal said, if you ever played pen & paper D&D, it should come rather naturally. Beyond the combat, it has a truly epic story, and the party dynamics are the best I've experienced in any video game. This was Bioware at its peak in my opinion. Mass Effect 2 and KotOR are the descendants of Baldur's Gate 2 in terms of gameplay and character development.

I would actually suggest playing BG1 then 2, thought BG2 is the superior game.

Move along; nothing to see here, people. Just a long, flattering Steam commercial. I wish that they would do the same love-fest for Gog.com or some other company that has a bit more respect for customer ownership rights. Steam really could use some competition in the digital distribution market (besides EA).

Never try to fix something that's not broken.

I still don't quite see the market for this. I don't think that the average PC gamer is itching to game on the living room TV, although they could do that now without a Steam box. Nor is the average console gamer dying to experience Steam's online DRM and propriety OS (with its start-from-scratch game library). Anyhow, we'll see...

@driftingsilvia I somewhat agree with your sentiments here. And it doesn't help that the guy is doing the mocking with an English accent.

There will be a market for this, since there are people (not me) who don't have an issue with Steam's "you don't own it and thus can't resell it" DRM philosophy. But considering the poor reception of Microsoft's initial online DRM for the XBox1, I don't see the Steam machine as a threat to the established consoles.

People who already like Valve/Steam have PCs and probably won't migrate to a console just to sit in front of the living room TV. (All modern PCs can already be plugged into an HD TV anyway.) And people who are already in the console market will likely have a big problem with Valve's approach to requiring online DRM (just ask Microsoft about this). Steam sales may entice a few people, but most games on Steam are not discounted on any given day. If anything, their prices for AAA games and other titles are typically as high or higher than other outlets on most days.

We'll see what becomes of this, but I don't think Valve can be competitive in the console market with a PC gaming philosophy (and DRM setup). They would really need to go against the grain and offer something that the established console makers don't offer, and I don't really know what that could be.