SteamOS - SteamWare

Blide_sl said:

Really having a hard time seeing the angle here for Valve. It's almost like they're trying to compete directly with Microsoft's ubiquitous ecosystem which I'm not sure is a winning strategy in the long run.

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I think Valve sees MS locking down their OS in such a way that the only apps that can get put on it are the ones that come from MS's app store. Also I think they realize this isn't going to happen overnight, nor will the widespread adoption of their console, but doing this no allows their future to not rely on the benevolence of a traditionally malevolent and increasingly not terribly intelligence force.

That's my take on it, and I could very well be wrong.

MS has been moving in some strange ways and making rather befuddling decisions, and I can't blame Valve for looking for options, even if that option is a risky move into controlling their own destiny.

The more I think about this "Steam Box" the more I see this as hubris on grand scale by Gaben. His displeasure with Microsoft is well-documented, especially with how M$ wants to streamline Xbox Live and Windows into the same service/software. He's probably right in the sense that M$ is angling to make steam irrelevant, but I think what's lost in all the hyperbole and hoopla is us, the people who USE steam. We wouldn't stand for it being marginalized when we have so much invested in it. We are vocal about both it and our admiration for Valve. As long as we stay that way Redmond will listen. Gaben doesn't need to huff and puff about Win8's adventure in appland, he just needs to keep on keepin' on. Keep Steam the way it is.

In the end, I think this is an overreaction on Gaben's part. It's like Square having to make The Spirits Within because they felt theyhadto make a movie. Who knows what Square looks like today if they never made that movie. It scares me that Valve may be making the same mistake. If they fail, Steam fails.

Agripa_sl said:

I am brand loyal to steam and would pick them over Microsoft any day of the week. I am sure many people share my sentiment. 40 million people use xbox live versus 50 million registered steam users, either way it is a giant potential starting base.

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It's not Xbox Live that I'm referring to though, it's Windows. All indications point to the new Xbox as being a Windows box for the television. If true, MS would be able to make a more seamless experience between the PC and console than Steam can.

All they have to do is start the marketing with this and it will crush everything beneath its boot

Blide_sl said:

It's not Xbox Live that I'm referring to though, it's Windows. All indications point to the new Xbox as being a Windows box for the television. If true, MS would be able to make a more seamless experience between the PC and console than Steam can.

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Pretty sure that was MS's plan the whole time: Control your whole home entertainment experience. It will be your computer, cable box/dvr, video game system, media streamer, etc. Why else would they pump billions into it? Because they love games?

As we know, a lot of this is speculation, and in the last few years (especially this year with Source Filmmaker, Greenlight, new community pages) Valve has made steam a more community-driven experience than it already was. The Greenlight program especially since people can submit their games to steam, and everyone else can decide whether or not it should be sold on steam. That is huge. This console could be something that supports smaller/indie games (like steam already does) while still having it host your big name games. A lot of other consoles don't really catertoomuch to their audience, with as much as Steam has been doing, I wouldn't doubt if this is what comes of it.

Still speculation though.

Gaben has also said in the past that coding for the PS3 was absolute shit and he hates it, so I doubt he would make it difficult to port to this, regardless of OS.

All I know is I trust Gaben a lot more then MS, and I hope he lives to be a hundred and ten then gets cloned into a younger body again, just in time for the release of Half Life 3.

I think they are going in the wrong direction. What they should have done is go to Microsoft and Sony and tell them their online store are total shit and that they should outsource them to Valve. I am pretty sure in all of two slides with some $$$ figures they can convince any bean counter. The fine people at Valve know nothing about building hardware, but they certainly know about making money off an online store.

whelp.


I did say the "winner" will be the one with the best marketplace, UI, etc....

Szlia_sl said:

The fine people at Valve know nothing about building hardware, but they certainly know about making money off an online store.

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If the rumors are accurate, Valve doesn't need to know a ton about building hardware.

Szlia_sl said:

I think they are going in the wrong direction. What they should have done is go to Microsoft and Sony and tell them their online store are total shit and that they should outsource them to Valve. I am pretty sure in all of two slides with some $$$ figures they can convince any bean counter. The fine people at Valve know nothing about building hardware, but they certainly know about making money off an online store.

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I remember reading an article somewhere sometime possibly maybe a somewhat time ago that Valve in fact did this. They approached Nintendo specifically, who was at the time developing the Wii U, and they basically laughed them out the door. I can imagine Gaben probably got as far as the little guard-booth on the Microsoft campus before the whole area erupted into laughter, triggering several seismic false alarms. And Sony I assume was too busy failing hard on the software side of things for their Vita to even care or notice how irrelevant they are becoming.

All I want is a Steam Big Picture app on my GoogleTV type device (at this moment a Logitech Revue). Hell, give it to me as an app on my LG receiver, and I would think about performing felatio on every member of the team.

Do we really need another "console"? We have the big 3, pc, mac, the android console and now steams hat in the ring? Not to mention all the handheld shit.

Adebisi_sl said:

If I were in charge (can I be in charge pls), I'd go the HTPC road. Make a Valve GCPC (Game Console PC):

-A sleek compact case
-Runs Windows
-Boots into some kind of Steam app where you can launch your library
-Great game controller hardware
-A keyboard and mouse device you can use on your lap

Basically package this and sell it to the masses.

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The problem with that is the costs. You would have to sell it as a pc because no way youd coin it a console and have it run the top end games for pc ona console budget without a major loss for each unit sold.

Info is definately lacking.

There is a huge amount of driver and API overhead on Windows. That is why consoles with their vastly underpowered hardware still manage decent performance - mainly it's the ability for direct memory access. A Windows Steam-box is going to have these same issues, so it will require more powerful (and expensive) hardware compared to the more traditional consoles. A Linux-bases gaming oriented OS could alleviate this some, but not enough.

The Steam library is predominately Windows-based. I can't foresee Steam-box being so proprietary that it effectively becomes it's own eco-system, as it would fragment the market into Xbox, PS, Nintendo, PC, and Steam-box. For any real success it must have access to the Steam library with little-to-no modification. That leaves a Windows-based Steam box and it's expensive hardware and OS license, or Linux-based through ports and Wine. Many games work with Wine (I played WoW through TBC via Wine), but few work perfectly, and many need specific Wine configurations and even Wine versions. It's one thing for a Linux user to deal with Wine issues such as fonts and installer work-arounds, but it's another for a Steam-box buyer to have to. Is Valve going to manage this? Or the developer? How large does the Steam-box user base need to be for developers to judge it worthwhile to make a Linux port or ensure Wine compatibility?

How about game design? Every console game is designed for a 10' foot UI and a controller. Will this lead to the consolfication of even more PC games? What about game genres? We all like fighting, sports and adventure games on consoles, but what about all the RTS and strategy games currently on Steam, and every other genre that doesn't lend itself to controller play? Are we going to have Steam-box targeted games and Steam-PC targeted games? How about online between between Steam-box and Steam-PC (i.e. separate servers due to different controls)?

What about hardware? An AMD apu is probably the most cost effective, but Trinity on Windows isn't really enough for 1080p play. Perhaps the next incarnation will be. If Steam-box is Linux-based, can they still use AMD hardware due to AMD/Linux driver issues? Would Intel/Nvidia be too expensive? What about hardware generations/revisions? Is there going to be any incentive to develop for anything more than the baseline Steam-box specs? In 3, 4, or 5 years are games still going to be targeting the 2013 level Steam-box hardware? I've got a HTPC that (with a discrete GPU) will probably be more powerful than any Steam-box. Can I just install the Steam-box OS/App while using my own hardware?

It seems to me that the power of Steam-box lies in the gaming library and seamless integration between Steam-box and Steam-PC. Playing the game on Steam-box, syncing to the cloud, and picking up where you left off on your PC would be great. I doubt Valve intends to take on Sony, MS, and Nintendo with a dedicated console that doesn't interact with Steam PC, but then again, maybe they will. Games could be labeled as compatible with PC, Mac, Steam-box, or Steam-play for all three. What's the incentive for using Steam-box over a gaming HTPC? Just price? Then how cheap does it need to be versus just building a Windows-based SFF PC that will play everything on Steam?

Obviously Valve has thought all this through and believe they have solutions. And they probably do. How about just some sort of extender for graphics and the controller that uses your current PC for the processing?

I'm primarily a PC gamer and I've just started using Big Picture mode. I'm very impressed with it and I expect the line between console and pc will become more blurred as time goes on.

My hope is that a Steam box will create a gold standard for PC specs that everyone will develop for. I'm tired of shitty PC ports or driver issues with certain setups.

Szlia_sl said:

I think they are going in the wrong direction. What they should have done is go to Microsoft and Sony and tell them their online store are total shit and that they should outsource them to Valve. I am pretty sure in all of two slides with some $$$ figures they can convince any bean counter.

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I can't imagine that "hard sell every turd that Microsoft and Sony can possibly squeeze out" is one of Valve's go-to strategies for making money off an online store. Icanimagine that Microsoft and Sony would demand that kind of stipulation in any kind of agreement along the lines of what you're talking about.

The fine people at Valve know nothing about building hardware, but they certainly know about making money off an online store.

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I personally thought almost the same thing about Sony not knowing anything about video games before the first PlayStation came out. I mean, WTF, nobody had EVER made a successful cd-rom based console, and why should those noobs at Sony have been any different, right?

Read through some more of Valve's blogs, and they seem to be pretty stoked about OpenGL. They're also working directly with hardware vendors to improve the API both in hardware, software, and drivers.

Perhaps this is their play, to finally get OpenGL accepted as the state-of-the-art go-to API for gaming. They'll have to solve some of its problems, and get developers on board, and that is no small task. However the API is platform agnostic, and has an open license so those are some things working in its favor.

OpenGL competed for a little while with DirectX but it didn't quite have the support to win that war. Perhaps Gaben's golden beard is the magic dust that can make it happen. Still doesn't resolve Steam's massive catalogue of DirectX games, though.