Steam Machines

[Shamus Young]

Steam Machines

No single gaming device is objectively better than the others. It depends on how you play, why you play, and where you play. There really is no clear winner. But on the corporate side, the debate has been over for almost a decade, and consoles won. It wasn't even close.

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[Thunderous Cacophony]

If They don't have Half-Life 3 as a launch title, they're crazy.

That's something I hope that Valve will start pushing. If they expect people to invest money in the Steam Box, a lot of them are going to start wanting first-party titles delivered on a basis slightly more regular than "every few years, when we feel like it."

 

[SoulChaserJ]

Valve is really good and the competition is that inept. For those that have been on Steam for a while, we know that Steam is (right now...not previously) the balance of what we the gamers want and what the publishers want. This equilibrium was possibly reached because Valve is a publisher.

 

[lacktheknack]

Valve is really good and the competition is that inept. For those that have been on Steam for a while, we know that Steam is (right now...not previously) the balance of what we the gamers want and what the publishers want. This equilibrium was possibly reached because Valve is a publisher.

This.

We have the Pro-Gamer example (gog.com: DRM-free entirely, decently cheap, very few AAA games) and the Pro-Publisher example (Games for Windows Live... don't get me started...), and Valve is nicely in between the two.

Also, Shamus echoed quite a few things I've said, just... significantly less passionately. Feels good, man.

 

[Tanakh]

I am not sure brah, first you say:

without really understanding what it is or why this is such a completely fascinating move for Valve to make.

then

No single gaming device is objectively better than the others. It depends on how you play, why you play, and where you play. There really is no clear winner. But on the corporate side, the debate has been over for almost a decade, and consoles won. It wasn't even close.

And then explain why is important FOR THE CORPORATE SIDE, user base, library, market penetration and such. Forgetting that I as an user might care little about that, it depends on how I play, why and where.

I see why they can manage to get into the console race, how it makes sense and their strengths. I also care almost nothing about it, the most exciting announcement for me is that they will give for free (the two kinds of free) a Linux focused on gaming to the community, because I love to tinker with stuff and mod it and fiddle and learn! The second most exciting announcement is the openness to "hacking" the box and controller though I seriously doubt they release all the documentation for the hardware and the drivers (expect at least the source code, but even that might be too much). The third would be that they will at the same time free and standardize the PC gaming market... maybe. I only wish I was a teenager in middleschool when it launches to have all day to devote to silly hobbies :3

Edit: Thanks for the link to Gratis/Libre, baffled me a little bit why gringos had such trouble with the concepts till I realized you use the same word for both!

 

[StriderShinryu]

I'm no particular fan of Valve, but I do have and use Steam pretty much simply because it's the only real option if you're going to game at all seriously on your PC. And there are numbers available on just how important Steam is at least on the developer side of things. Many indie developers have stated that the difference between being on Steam and not being on Steam is in the range of their pre/non Steam sales falling in around at best 15% of what they once they get on Steam. That's gigantic, and even more so if you're a smaller/indie developer where you might as well not even be making games if they're not ending up for sale on Steam.

Anywho, I do agree that it will be interesting to see what happens. It's a bold move by Valve, and they're not dumb, but it still seems to me like they're maybe shooting for a market that doesn't exist. That's not to say that it won't, especially if Apple and/or Google go whole hog in the same direction, but I don't see there being a big enough audience right now for what Valve is selling to make it worthwhile.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

But note how Valve is routing around these problems. They're fixing the lack of titles by making a platform that will run (some?) PC games.

This is the biggest hurdle they have. Currently the SteamBox/SteamOS announcement page states that we can play Linux games directly on the box, but if we want to play our Windows games we have to stream them from another currently existing Windows PC on the same network that has said game already installed. Most big games people play fall exactly into that category. If they want to get any traction at all with SteamOS they need to get the Windows drivers cracked for Linux, otherwise they will end up with two groups of people: those that will just continue to play on Windows PCs and those that bought a SteamBox thinking they could play Windows games on it, only to realize they can't.

 

[Sanunes]

The big hurdle I see with the SteamBox is that it might not appeal to console players for it doesn't have the established franchises for that is where Valve really has been slacking to lure people to their console and unless you buy a SteamBox PC players are going to lose their biggest advantage and that is the ability to play older games. Unless Valve kicks up their game production I can't see the big lure aside from "sticking it to Windows".

 

[sushkis2]

Am I the only one who remembers that story, where Gabe Newell himself told how linux was actually better performance wise for pc games? I remember that he showed Left 4 dead as an example, where on linux they got 20-40% more fps than on windows. They should push that story if they really want more people on their side.

I think that Windows as an OS is spread a bit too thin for all it's purposes. Think about it, it's used everywhere, from offices to servers, and probably because of this, gaming on Windows is the last thing on Microsoft's agenda, which is why they so desperately are pushing the XBONE. OK, let them have it, let windows be used for work, I myself wouldn't have it any other way. But it's about time someone actually took the initiative on making truly dedicated software for gaming, since the PC gaming hardware is ever evolving, and people actually are buying their TITANs and i7 processors, which, so it seems, are already better than the hardware in PS4 and XBONE, not to mention the WiiU.

Long story short, i think it's obvious why AAA devs favor the consoles, it's because of dedicated software, and finally Valve is offering the same dedicated framework, only on pc, where anyone can make their own hardware setup, depending on their financial capabilities, and currently available hardware.

Just think about it, PS3 had about 512 mb of RAM, and for the same games,(say, for example, Fallout 3) to be played on Windows, you needed at least 2GB of RAM. Crazy ain't it?

 

[Sanunes]

Just think about it, PS3 had about 512 mb of RAM, and for the same games,(say, for example, Fallout 3) to be played on Windows, you needed at least 2GB of RAM. Crazy ain't it?

When they say 2gigs of RAM for a Windows based PC they are also including the requirements for Windows itself which if I remember correctly is around 1gig and things like the draw distance and the amount of clutter on the ground were negatively impacted.

 

[Oskuro]

I just hope they don't go megalomaniacal on us and lock down their market Apple-style by making all Steam-based games SteamOS exclusive in the long run.

If the Steam Box/OS can run *any* Linux compatible games, whether they are from Steam or not, I'm in. Both as a player and as a hobbyist developer.

 

[romxxii]

Just think about it, PS3 had about 512 mb of RAM, and for the same games,(say, for example, Fallout 3) to be played on Windows, you needed at least 2GB of RAM. Crazy ain't it?

That was mainly due to the OS taking up about half of those 2GB. The tradeoff is that when you exit the game, you can do work stuff. Also, you shouldn't compare PS3 releases to WIndows ones. For starters, the textures are higher, the draw distance and clutter are better as someone has already pointed out, we have more graphics-intensive lighting/shadowing, tessellation, etc. Basically, all the goods you're getting on the PS4, we've been running it. Which is why we have higher requirements.

A gaming-only Linux distro sounds nice, and hopefully Steam Machines + SteamOS will convince devs to start building Linux ports. What I'm more concerned about are my old games, and the stuff I bought off GOG. Other than the streaming feature advertised, will they build emulators into the OS for those old Windows/DOS games?

 

[romxxii]

I just hope they don't go megalomaniacal on us and lock down their market Apple-style by making all Steam-based games SteamOS exclusive in the long run.

If the Steam Box/OS can run *any* Linux compatible games, whether they are from Steam or not, I'm in. Both as a player and as a hobbyist developer.

The whole reason for this SteamOS thing is because Gabe was disgusted with the Metro store's walled garden. Thankfully for him, Metro flopped hard, so Steam's presence on the desktop will continue unabated.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

I personally have faith that Valve can pull off a venture like putting another console in the market. The only other attempt for a new console to break the scene was the Ouya, and to say that it barely made a splash in the little puddle it made is a huge disservice to the puddle or the very concept of splashing.

But Steam has a backlog of huge titles that you'd want to play on the big screen, a lot of fanbase support, and this controller that people legitimately say DOESN'T suck. There's no way this can possibly go wrong.

... Hopefully.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

I just hope they don't go megalomaniacal on us and lock down their market Apple-style by making all Steam-based games SteamOS exclusive in the long run.

Huh?

Apple doesn't do this. If you sell software through the App Store, you are free to make Windows, Linux or Android versions of your software too. They do not have to be exclusive to Apple's store.

 

[Amir Kondori]

Will the SteamOS be available to load on your own "Steam box"? That would be awesome, you could either buy their's or just order one of their controllers and build your own.

I may actually buy one of these for the living room, since I have been looking to put a streaming media box on the 60" plasma in the living room and if it could also play my Steam library then I am all for that.

 

[Sanunes]

Will the SteamOS be available to load on your own "Steam box"? That would be awesome, you could either buy their's or just order one of their controllers and build your own.

I may actually buy one of these for the living room, since I have been looking to put a streaming media box on the 60" plasma in the living room and if it could also play my Steam library then I am all for that.

From what I understand the SteamOS will be free for anyone to download if they want to. I am not sure about the controller, but I would imagine so for it would be reducing the size of the market if they make it exclusive to the SteamBox.