Valve Boss Gabe Newell Thinks Closed Platforms Quash Innovation, Points Finger at Apple

Outspoken Valve boss, Gabe Newell, thinks that it is “ominous” that closed platforms such as Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE are growing in popularity. “On the platform side, it’s sort of ominous that the world seems to be moving away from open platforms,” he said said during a panel at the WTIA TechNW conference, as reported by the Seattle Times.

“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.’”

Newell thinks closed platforms are the “wrong philosophical approach” and thinks that efforts to keep open platforms are under threat from “very large structural investments and structural changes”

“I consider Apple to be very closed,” added Newell, saying its 30 percent cut hurts developers. “let’s say you have a book business and you are charging 5 to 7 percent margins. Yuu can’t exist in an Apple world because they want 30 percent and they don’t care they you only have 7 percent to play with.”

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

Newell continued his thoughts about Apple. “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,”

While it is easy to see where Newell is coming from, but it’s worth noting that he does run Valve, which does its business very differently to Apple. Also, Apple’s closed ecosystem hasn’t fared too badly so far, has it?

David Bluhm, President of game outfit Z2Live defended Apple on the panel. “I would argue Apple’s system is very open but very proprietary… it’s open with their rules”

I tend to agree with Bluhm on this one. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks, VG247