Man, I want this to work, but looking at what they're offering it feels highly tenuous. Loads of risk with a project like this, but only a vague and cursory risk assessment included. I'd rather just give my money to charity than throw it away like this.

What I mean is, how do you know which button is where, given that they're not named? So on a Nintendo pad B is at the bottom with A on the right, while on the Xbox A is at the bottom and B is on the right. So if a game says "press A' where am I pressing? Bottom or right?

Its not just using the machine as a loss leader - Sony/MS can guarantee 75M+ unit sales to the people who make components for their devices. That means they can drive a mean bargain with their component suppliers, in a way that Valve simply can't. I agree, $800+ is very likely.

One question I cant figure out - you can configure each touchpad to be more like traditional a/b/x/y style layouts - but how do you know which button goes where? Is there no visual feedback at all? Do they take the Nintendo convention or the Xbox?

Could you given an example a mid-range PC and show how it would be better than a PS4/Xbox One for circa $250-400?

My phone bill from playing Quakeworld on a 56k flex dial up was about £1000 over the course of a year. Does that count?

Together with the latest announcement, Valve is effectively breaking down the few remaining obstacles standing in the way of PC gaming dominance in the living room. 2014 is going to be one hell of a year in gaming.

Will it work? No idea, but thank you valve for trying something new.

Taking selfies in GTA V can be a lot of fun, but sometimes it's so fun your hand bends backwards awkwardly and shoves into your face and then your phone disappears and you're like listen it's supposed to look like that.

Your point has now changed. As I understand it, you originally stated that you would like there to be a single language that humans could instruct computers with that also, in the very same form, would work as a conversational language between two humans. Now you're making the point that humans can learn all sorts of…

As you could through flag semaphore, that doesn't mean flags are analogous to the human brain.

Ok, impossible is a strong word. However both implausible and unnecessary are better words.

What would you say of dying or dead languages? Are they "real" languages?

The reason why not is that brains and computers work in fundamentally different ways. What works for you as a conversational language would not work for a computer as a direct instruction.

Agreed. They wont even be pulling 20 hour days yet.

They're not trying to replace pads, relax.

Out of time? Its not out for another 6 weeks, we're barely into crunch time for developers.

It depends on whether you think joypads are good enough. Personally I think they're limited. They're useful in that their good enough to play most game types, so they're popular as great all rounders. But a lot of games have hit the limit in terms of possible actions with the buttons available, leaving you with either…

Lets be clear - if you bring poor product to market, you'll fail. Regardless of the potential, if it doesn't work (whether thats hardware or software) you're up shit creek.

I think this soundtrack is good in the sense of being a reflection of what you would hear while driving around the city - but in terms of actually good tunes you wanna listen to, not so great. Still think SA was a highwater mark in that respect.