Then you'd get the infighting, since those are the three biggest middleware game engine producers. (UE vs IT vs Source)

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Please, do not confuse one concept for a completely different concept.

And to that point, Pachter is right. It would be a lot easier for any company (successful or not) to remain an independent entity, if they could offload some of the costs associated with running their company, unto someone else.

Think of partnerships of this nature, as a cooperative and not a "buy out". There are several major advantages, as it always is anytime with people of like mind and vision team up to work together. The most obvious advantage, there is bound to be some operations overlap, that once cut out would instantly save all partner companies involved millions of dollars every year. That is money that can either be pocketed as profit, invested in R&D for creating better games, invested in game development for creating more games, or passed on in lower prices for Valve games to Valve fans.

In the case of a partnership with ZeniMax, Valve is looking to save millions of dollars for every game they release on a home console. True the PC is their primary platform, but so long as companies like Microsoft keep making consoles that are as easy to work with as the PC, Valve is not going to walk away from the extra 2 million units in sale their games see on the Xbox platform. With the PS3, Sony has had their ass handed to them for creating dead end architecture into their consoles. So you can bet that when PS4 arrives on the scene in a few years, it will be yet another console that will meet Valve's standards to develop on. And just like that, they are looking at another 2 million units per game hitting that console. All told, next gen, Valve could be moving as much as 5 million units per game across both consoles. Having to go to publishers like EA to get their games published on consoles is already expensive - it will only get moreso, and when EA is eating up a noticeable percentage of all your console sales, those are huge losses Valve does not have to incur if they were part of a partnership. And once again, for all the tens of millions they save by not having to go to EA to publish their games on console, that is money that can go to R&D, or making more games, or giving another promising studio a job at Valve, or passed on as savings directly to Valve's customers.

On the flipside of the partnership, the benefits to ZeniMax's other partners are obvious. Reduced fee (if not near free) for hosting their games on Steam, and the cross-pollination of ideas, technology and expertise.

No, Valve does not NEED anyone to be successful. But partnering with someone else, so they both mutually benefit from reduced costs to running their core business? Now that does make it a lot easier for Valve to continue to be successful.

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I mean, once you took a year to get everyone's ego out of the way, what exactly would there be to stop them from doing so?

The minds behind Unreal Engine 3.5, Source and id Tech 5, all working on a common middleware together . . . my God, it's like the perfect storm of industry middleware domination.

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In for example much the same way as MS does with the xbox, if not to that extent. Where the purpose is not as much to provide potential for good programs to be made, and used effectively on a mobile platform. But to sell farting Santas.

So yes, of course it's a real platform. It just sucks golfballs through a hose.

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