A successfull private company, with the best video game catalog, already king in PC gaming...

I don't see much for them to gain and plenty to lose if they let google build a big customer base.

Valve has the games and tried to build their own console and failed. Google has now effectively built their own console and doesn't have the games.

Valve only came up with Steam Boxes (and it's whole Linux push for that matter) as a defensive response to the Windows Store and the, at the time very real-seeming, possibility that Windows would become an entirely walled-garden they'd be beholden to. They put much effort into Steam Boxes, they were just a PC with Valve's Ubuntu derivative distro. Fortunately for Linux users though they did continue to put a lot of effort into making Linux gaming actually viable, thus insuring that they'll always have an out if Microsoft goes stupid.

yeah, valve has its own ecosystem it wants to lock people into

Valve has the Stream Link and VIVE. Steam Link is pretty much Stadia using your computer instead of the cloud. They're very much in the hardware business.

Valve have their own VR headset, the Valve Index. Steam Link was previously a hardware dongle but has been replaced by android/smart TV apps with the same name.

I'm surprised Nvidia didn't attempt to partner with them rather than developing GeForce Now as a separate product, they could have taken advantage of Valve's developer relationship/client/store front and handled the actual running of the hardware, which Valve seems much less interested in.

Stadia on the other hand is just a demonstration of the level of hubris Google is capable of engaging in. They thought they could launch a brand new store with the twist that people would need to pay a subscription to continue playing the games they had bought and without the option of using your own hardware should you end up purchasing a capable machine.

They are partnered, it's just not exclusive.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming

Ah, that's interesting. I had assumed any partnership would have integrated with the desktop steam client rather than a third party app, although I can see the benefits of separating it out in terms of pricing/billing models.

With Steam Link requiring you to own a beefy computer it's not really a competitor to what Stadia offers (and I don't know anybody who was able to get good performance out of Steam Link).

VIVE is by HTC supporting SteamVR, but Valve has their own first-pary VR headset + controllers with the Index.

I was able to get latency down to 10-20ms using steam link over ethernet, it works great for pretty much everything. It might give you problems if you're playing at a very high level in csgo/fighting games, but for most people it's pretty solid.

You're a few years late. VIVE is a separate HTC headset now. Vavle Index is Valve's VR headset.

Steamlink has hardware is dead because it was bad. Steam controller is dead as well.

Steamlink now is an android app that might work and might not work on your device.

Valve’s customer base is almost entirely semi-serious to hardcore gamers: then people with the most to lose and the least incentive to adopt stadia.

Partnering with Google on stadia would generate a sizeable backlash.

What's in it for Valve?

Access to people that don't want to buy a gaming PC.

Or can't, these days, considering how strangled the GPU market is.

If Valve wanted to do that why wouldn't they build it themselves instead? They have the server expertise.

If you want to make a cloud gaming service that isn't expensive and a good experience, you need it to be huge scale because more locations is essential for less latency, and you need a varied workload instead of just people playing games to amortize the costs of the servers. I don't know what other stuff Nvidia or Valve does that would keep these machines productively busy during the work day, but the big cloud companies probably have all kinds of things to justify over-provisioning machines so it seems like they have a limitless supply at peak gaming times while being cost-effective

I think Amazon, Google, and Microsoft will dominate cloud gaming eventually.

Yes they are? Their latest flagship game literally only works on their hardware.

Are you talking about Half Life: Alyx? It works on basically any VR headset as far as I know. I think they just need to be SteamVR compatible which basically everything is.

Just to confirm, you are correct, it works on almost any mass-market headset (probably on all headsets period, but I cannot verify that myself).

So far, I can confirm for a fact it works on HTC Vive, Valve Index, Oculus Rift S, and Oculus Quest 1/2 (in wired mode connected to PC, just like the other headsets, or using VR Desktop for wireless; I tried both and stuck to playing it with wireless).

Maybe, as soon as I heard it was VR only I stopped paying attention. But the point still stands - Valve is very much a hardware business, has been for years.

I wouldn't characterise them as a hardware business, their main focus is on software and they happen to be willing to produce hardware when they feel they need to.

I've played Alyx three times on two different VR headsets by two manufacturers and this is definitely not true.

Uhh, Valve definitely IS in the hardware business. They make streaming boxes, controllers, VR headsets/base stations and BCI tech.