SteamOS

Numbers_sl said:

There are even articles in businessweek and the Washington Post about Steam Machines and controller. I read that third party companies will have them out in 2014.

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Ao-_sl said:

Source?

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Zaphid_sl said:

No wonder, I mean Valve is more profitable per employee than almost any other company in the tech sector (maybe even better than that, but I don't have info). You definitely should watch them closely even if you aren't interested in games, gaming or hardware.

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Originally Posted by On compatibility

Hope explained that while Valve's controller is obviously designed to work natively with SteamOS, it can also be detected as a traditional controller by a PC not running Steam but would have extremely limited functionality. "Steam constantly updates the firmware that is running in this device," he said. "Even game by game, and eventually moment by moment, it's going to be updating the code that's running in the firmware. For that reason and a few other reasons, like updating configs and so forth, Steam is a required component wherever it runs, PC or Mac. Without Steam, if you plug this into one of those devices and run some game that's not part of Steam, you would only get the most basic functionality. It wouldn't actually be very valuable as a controlling device."

"It would basically be a mouse with 16 buttons," Coomer added.



Originally Posted by On adjusting sensitivity

Valve will also allow users to adjust things like sensitivity, which can be adjusted on a per-game basis in SteamOS. "On SteamOS, sensitivity is really easy to solve, because we can just change what the operating system's sensitivity is on the fly, based on what you're doing in a game," Hope said.However, in Legacy mode or in Windows, sensitivity won't be able to be adjusted."Windows has its own sensitivity settings for input. The game has its own sensitivity settings, and our controller has its own sensitivity settings. We have to find this sweet spot where we're averaging all three inputs into this spectrum," he said. "It's mostly solvable. There hasn't been any game on Windows that we haven't been able to play. But it takes a little bit more tweaking."



Originally Posted by Playing Dota :lol

So far, Valve has been able to successfully play (and win) games in every genre -- except for one.

"Somewhat ironically, our flagship at the moment that we spend a lot of time thinking about is Dota 2," Coomer said. "You can definitely play Dota 2 with this controller, but we wouldn't say to anybody who's a serious DOTA player that this is an acceptable replacement for a mouse and keyboard for that game."

"We have an internal joke. You can play Dota with the controller; you just can't win," Hope laughed. "Unless you're playing against everybody else who has a controller, and then it's a tractable problem."



Originally Posted by Regarding the most important genre on the PC

"There are definitely games that, although playable, aren't good enough for the existing players to spend much time playing them with this controller," Coomer explained. "There aren't very many games like that on Steam, though. So when we say we've managed to accommodate the whole catalog, there are some places where, at the highest level, that's not complete, because of things like Dota. But the entire catalog, we still think we can call it playable. There just aren't that many in that category." Hope said Valve has also "been doing a lot of experiments" regarding fighting games and will have more to reveal soon.

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Anyone who uses Steam's Big Picture Mode is already intimately acquainted with SteamOS, as they're very similar. SteamOS looks and acts like Big Picture Mode, except it's the basis for the entire hardware system. It's controller-friendly and easy to navigate. The same Steam splash page washes across the screen when it launches, and the same tile-based layout of games and the Steam store are visible at launch. As promised, the OS is built on Linux (not based on Ubuntu, we're told, but entirely custom), though you'd never know it as the only interactive layer is all Steam.

That means it also has the limitations of Steam: SteamOS is not the replacement for Windows 8 you've been waiting for. Beyond basics like browsing the web, there's little in the way of standard OS functions. While Valve reps showed off slides of the box's vanity shots using a Windows PC, I asked how I'd view such shots from within SteamOS -- the answer is that there's no real way to do so, as there's no file browsing system or image viewing application. While these limitations may not affect the vast majority of Steam Machine buyers (who are essentially buying a game console), it certainly impacts folks who are looking at Steam Machines as a replacement for their standard PC. Make no mistake: Steam Machines are PCs posing as game consoles, which comes with both positives and negatives.

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As far as passing judgment on the Steam Machine prototype that Valve built, that seems both needless (considering you can't buy it) and pointless (only 300 of you are getting them, and this one isn't representative of the entire batch). Needless to say, you could build a pretty powerful PC using the internals Valve was running on the box we used.

The operating system, however, is another story entirely. Without even base level support for media playback, streaming options (Netflix, Hulu, etc.), and a relatively limited list of games supported natively, it's very clearly early days for SteamOS (Valve says it's in active talks with streaming companies, and working with a variety of developers to develop their games for SteamOS). At this point, though, it's hard to consider music/TV/movies one of the "pillars" of Valve's operating system, and we haven't seen game streaming in action.

Both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, however, feature rich, custom-built OSes, and both have long lists of games in development. Which is to say nothing of both Sony and Microsoft having proven track records in the living room. In the near future, Valve's Steam Machines and SteamOS aren't taking down the living room's traditional trio of console makers, but Valve's always played the long game (remember Steam at launch? woof!), and that approach has consistently succeeded for Valve. Just like the two new consoles from Microsoft and Sony, what's interesting isn't how things play out this holiday, but next holiday. We'll revisit Steam Machines and SteamOS at CES 2014, and have more on Valve's push into the living room as the year continues.

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Mist_sl said:

Yeah, I read that earlier. That's a huge disappointment. I assume that's only for now, though. At the very least, it's running linux, so getting VLC running on it is practically a given.

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Droigan_sl said:

Curious though, isn't DirectX a Microsoft thing? With Win 8.1 supposedly having some special DirectX 11.2 things that you need Win 8.1 for? Can the Steam OS play directx games? I don't know much about that stuff. Is openGL used instead/patched in for all games?

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Mist_sl said:

It's an operating system, that runs games and has a web browser. Even if it doesn't have a file browser, or even an API for a load dialogue, you can always just write one.

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Sean_sl said:

No, games all have to be ported to Linux & openGL for them toreallywork. Valve is going to have a difficult time convincing everyone to do yet another SKU.

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Gecko_sl said:

Hopefully DirectX will go the way of ActiveX and other proprietary crap MS technologies. I've read currently the money is in Ipad and consoles vs PC gaming. Hopefully that'll push more gaming companies to open standards.

What does the PS4 use? I can't imagine Sony using DirectX.

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Vvoid_sl said:

The problem for me is, with a computer with a decent amount of power required to play the majority of games being released in the near future, it is dumb NOT to have stuff like that built into it, even if people do have it on their TVs. All that power sitting there doing nothing but waiting to play games is such a waste. I mean, I guess if it comes in under the price of a console no one is going to worry about it too much besides me, but the interface for Netflix on my TV is ass compared to even my Boxee, let alone an actual PC. And that's just Netflix. I'm not saying I necessarily want to design spreadsheets on it, but I'd like it to handle every single one of my local and cloud streaming demands at the very least. Without having to figure out how to use someone else's modified version either.

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