Valve Reportedly Working On 'Steam Box' Gaming Console 233
An anonymous reader writes "This article at the Verge claims that Valve is currently working on a way to bring Steam to the living room with its own gaming console. Quoting: 'According to sources, the company has been working on a hardware spec and associated software which would make up the backbone of a "Steam Box." The actual devices may be made by a variety of partners, and the software would be readily available to any company that wants to get in the game. Adding fuel to that fire is a rumor that the Alienware X51 may have been designed with an early spec of the system in mind, and will be retroactively upgradable to the software. Apparently meetings were held during CES to demo a hand-built version of the device to potential partners. We're told that the basic specs of the Steam Box include a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GPU. The devices will be able to run any standard PC titles, and will also allow for rival gaming services (like EA's Origin) to be loaded up. Part of the goal of establishing a baseline for hardware, we're told, is that it will give developers a clear lifecycle for their products, with changes possibly coming every three to four years. Additionally, there won't be a required devkit, and there will be no licensing fees to create software for the platform.'"
It better play the games I already own (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this would be a great addition to the market, but if I can't carry over my PC catalog then it will be stillborn.
Re:It better play the games I already own (Score:5, Insightful)
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True. But I can think of 65.8 million reasons [wikipedia.org] why Microsoft wouldn't
want them running a directX capable OS...
Re:It better play the games I already own (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft wouldn't have much say over this; after all, in the end, it's a PC like any other, just advertised as a gaming console, and pre-configured for that purpose. Discriminating OEMs over the intended purpose of equipment that they sell would not look well in any anti-monopoly hearing, too (especially given that this was a point that was brought up back during antitrust investigation in US).
Re:It better play the games I already own (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It better play the games I already own (Score:5, Insightful)
My understanding of the story is that essentially this will be a Windows computer with Steam installed. There are two major developments that this signals:
First, that Valve plans to start issuing a sort of standard system requirement for game developers to target, which is one of the benefits of consoles right now. Developers know what platform they're developing for when they develop a PS3 game, and when I buy a PS3 game I know it'll play on my PS3. If all Steam Boxes have the same system requirements, then you get the same benefit.
The other implication is that Valve must be developing Steam software suitable for use on a big screen tv. This is going to mean menu systems with large fonts that can be navigated with a remote, as well have controller/remote hardware to use with it.
I'm pretty optimistic about this. I've been ranting for years now about how Valve should develop a console.
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Perhaps valve should develop a "big-screen" version of their software and leave it up to the gamer to build or modify their boxes appropriately. If anybody knows how to build bitchin' rigs, it's gamers. And Alienware machines have been overpriced pieces of shit for a long time now.
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Nope. This is obviously aimed at the current 'console gamers' who just want a box which plugs in and runs Steam with a minimum hardware spec for developers to work to.
Even the summary manages to say it, no need to read the article.
Re:It better play the games I already own (Score:5, Insightful)
So instead of trivially adapting your existing PC for display on a Big-screen, you feel compelled to shell out extra dollars for a piece of hardware, which is essentially another redundant PC, that you don't even need?
Well no, if you already have a good gaming rig, then you don't need to buy a new one. I don't think Valve is asking you to, either. There are hints, at least, that this will be more a set of standardized specs than a particular hardware console. As I said, I think what Valve is really doing is setting a standard set of requirements for gaming PCs. So in this scheme, you can buy a gaming PC that's "Steambox certified" (or whatever), and then in the Steam store, you'll be able to see that games are designed to run on all "Steambox certified" hardware.
It won't prevent you from running the same games on another computer, but it will make it so developers have a consistent hardware platform to target, and so gamers basically won't need to think about system requirements for each game. If games are developed/optimized for a 2012 Steambox and you have a 2012 model Steambox, then you know that it'll play well.
Re:It better play the games I already own (Score:5, Insightful)
You forgot to mention that Valve will have its box for sale, and its form factor and default software will be tailor made for TV use. The UI will probably be centered around a game pad. So not only do you have the specs, you have a marketable product.
And to reinforce what you already said: To the non-technical, buying a gaming PC is tricky. Countless people have no doubt been burned whey they bought a $300 PC hoping it would play the latest games, only to be disappointed when their on-board video card turned everything into a slide show. Or maybe they listened to the salesman at Best Buy who convinced them that to really play games smoothly they were going to have to drop at least $1,500. So you could deal with all that mess, or you could spend $300 on an XBox and KNOW you're good to go. Valve knows that if buying a gaming PC were as easy as buying an XBox that they could potentially see a lot more customers.
Re:It better play the games I already own (Score:5, Insightful)
So you can't see that this is a blatant stepping-stone toward a Closed Platform and Vendor Lock-In?
This coming from a guy named "macs4all" is pretty ironic.
But, no, I don't see that. More importantly, I don't see the point of doing so for Valve. They're doing very well by covering their present niche, which is PC and Mac gaming. They already have some lock-in, in a sense that a game you buy from Steam needs Steam to run. Aside from that, they have not shown any signs of restricting your hardware and OS choices - if anything, they're diversifying them, since the release of Steam on OS X (which lets you download and run games on Mac that you have previously purchased on PC!).
This move is, quite obviously, an attempt to diversify further by also taking over a slice of the console market. What's sinister about it?
Re:It better play the games I already own (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I was trying to be above all that ad hominem crap; but I forgot this is Slashdot...
Chill down. It was hard not to rise to the bait like that. ~
Unless I am drastically wrong, maintaining these Steam variants isn't screwing with Developers of "Steam-Compatible" games (isn't Steam just a cross-platform API, much like Qt or (ewww!) Flash?). It's really only Valve that is feeling the pain of multiple Steam platforms, right? (I admit to knowing nothing about developing for Steam). Otherwise, how could have Valve's catalog been instantly available to OS X users just because "Steam" itself was ported?
The short answers are: you're wrong; wrong; and it isn't.
To begin with, the entire Steam catalog is not available on OS X. Only those games which developers have elected to port to OS X are there - though porting Steam was itself a pretty strong push for game publishers to consider such porting, which is why it has a decent selection now - GTA, Civilization etc. Then, of course, Valve also helped by porting its own engine and games that use it.
Steam is not a cross-platform API for games. It is a platform for game distribution, but it cares nothing about how your game is actually implemented in terms of graphics, sound etc. It does give you some APIs to enable Steam's DRM, and also (optionally) to do stuff like achievements, cloud storage for configs and savegames, Steam friend system etc - but nothing to help you write a cross-platform engine.
That's precisely why the console runs Windows and not some kind of Linux-based embedded thingy - because most games in Steam catalog are still Windows only, and so are most new titles.
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Not necessarily. The advantage of consoles is that they get to be sold at a loss, since those costs are subsidized by the money the companies make off the video games. A Steam console seems like a pretty good way to give a good gaming experience to those who can't afford a computer with the same specs.
I'm sorry, did I miss a mention of price?
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Re:It better play the games I already own (Score:4, Informative)
Well, a console doesn't run standard PC titles, but you develop for XBOX 360 with Visual Studio and XNA. Compile, download to console, and play.
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It's also one of the downsides of consoles - as you're stuck with whatever hardware the console provides, even if it's years out of date.
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We're already stuck, the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are extremely outdated, and a five year old PC is more powerful than either of them. The upside is that you can still place games at a comfortable quality settings on a five year old PC.
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My understanding of the story is that essentially this will be a Windows computer with Steam installed.
Is there any inherent reason why it would have to be Windows? If you're going for the console market, i.e. not worried about people needing legacy productivity software, what sense does it make to pay the Microsoft tax? Certainly Sony and Nintendo don't do it, and even Microsoft doesn't run the same operating system on XBOX as they do on PCs.
Re:It better play the games I already own (Score:5, Insightful)
The goal would be to get the entire library of Steam games to run on that console from day 1. It's also easier for the developers if they have, essentially, one platform to target for both PC and console.
Anyway, judging from the listed specs, this is not a low-end rig by any measure, meaning that it will already be priced noticeably higher than competitors - so $30 (or whatever it is these days?) for OEM Windows is not likely to make a big difference. They'll probably position it as a console for high-end gaming - in terms of eye candy, it can certainly beat any current-gen console by a considerable margin, especially on a Full HD TV where high-res will be very visible.
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You're taking the comment out of context.
MPC1 and MPC2 were standards for Windows Multimedia
PC97/98/99/2001 were also standards for Windows.
Prior to 1997 (AC97 standard), sound cards either came with windows drivers and "sound blaster compatible mode" under dos, or no dos support at all. From 1994 to 1997, some sound cards came with Windows 95 drivers that enabled sound blaster support... under Windows 95. No support under DOS.
A lot of the problems with the sound cards prior to AC97 were a result of mutuall
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Gaming doesn't "live and die on the bleeding edge" like you say. If the huge popularity of consoles and flash games isn't obvious enough, you just have to take a look at the most played games on Steam and you'll see none of them requires high end machines.
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Gaming doesn't "live and die on the bleeding edge" like you say. If the huge popularity of consoles and flash games isn't obvious enough, you just have to take a look at the most played games on Steam and you'll see none of them requires high end machines.
Well, I knew I was going to get under arrest for that less-than-perfectly-qualified comment!
;-)
I agree that playing Angry Birds and Minesweeper is unlikely to tax any "computing platform" made since about 1995; but you and I also know that a so-called "spec" that includes the use of something like (IIRC) an i7 CPU and 4GB of RAM isn't aimed at playing minesweeper (unless it is coded in Flash, of course...)
So, with that clarification, my comments stand.
Now, do you care to address the actual content of
Re:It better play the games I already own (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone who never bought any dedicated gaming device (in exception to a GameBoy long long time ago), I would look forward to this if Steam provide their own dedicated operating system for the SteamBox. I'm a day-to-day GNU/Linux user which dual-boots into Windows 7 for gaming. One of the things I hate is having to care about antivirus and windows updates when *I just want to game*. Having Windows rebooting my computer automatically for a update when I'm in the middle of Portal is really annoying. I love Steam though, I like their game offers and associated publishers, I think its a great idea which simplifies the whole process of buying and installing a game and would certainly love to see that in a dedicated device.
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You do realize that Windows updates come out on a regular schedule (commonly called "Black Tuesday"), and that if you want to avoid your Windows deciding to reboot itself in the middle of a gaming session, you could simply boot it up the day after Black Tuesday and run the updates manually?
It's no different from updating your Linux system on a regular basis, which I would hope you're doing....
You could also simply install PlayOnLinux, and find that many (if not all) of your games are playable on Linux, and
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I didn't know about the Black Tuesday, thanks for the tip. Still, I have limited time to spend gaming so I would rather spend that time playing than to deal with updates or trying to get those games working on Linux. Hence my post about liking the idea of having a dedicated device with Steam which you just power on and play, no maintenance required : )
Re:It better play the games I already own (Score:5, Informative)
You really haven't used a game console in a while. For a PS3 and sometimes a Xbox 360 occasional usage is like this.
1) Start the console and what through the overly long boot animation
2) Wait for it to connect to the gaming network
3) Have it disconnect from the gaming network and tell you, your console needs an update and won't go online without it
4) Download the udpate, wait for it to install, and reboot your console
5) After the console starts back up launch the game, to have it tell you there is a required update for the game
6) Wait for the update to download and install
7) Finally play the game
This process is even worse if you are playing a game you haven't played before normally there is an automatic installation process you have to wait 10-15 minutes for. And that's after all of the updates it installs one by one.
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I think this would be a great addition to the market, but if I can't carry over my PC catalog then it will be stillborn.
You clearly have never used steam before! (Which prompts the question: What catalog?)
Anywhere you install Steam, you can sign into your account and download games you have purchased. All you need to remember is your Steam ID and password, and it will show your library of games. You can install any or all of them.
This is one of the biggest features Steam provides, to make it easy to manage your library from anywhere.
As the article clearly states, this is just a PC inside, and will not be locked down such
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Being a regular PC it will run Windows...
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being a PC case will be designed for the living room make it have the room for a wide video card + a 1 slot for a cable / tv card.
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I would rather they start over and create a Steam Console OS built on linux.
Yes, many games in my current library wouldn't translate, but it would eliminate the cost of a Windows license. Many Valve games have already been ported to the Mac, so that could provide the core offering of games until the third parties begin targeting the platform.
Also, if it catches on, game developers could target all the OpenGL platforms (Mac, Steam Console, Linux Desktop, Android) all at once. That would be a large enough ma
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You could have graphics cards on a 2 year lifecycle and have the game automatically pick the quality based on the one detected. Virtually every game no-adays can run on graphics cards older than 4 years, just it doesn't look as good as it could.
I think the main purpose for this is to simplify hardware requirements for a PC. "I have a steamBox 1" is simple, you make games and you say "compatible with steambox 1 or higher". Likewise, it ensures that nobody does stuff something stupid like skimp on dirt cheap
Steam Box AKA (Score:3, Insightful)
AKA a windows computer hooked up to a TV and with many software blocks in place to prevent general computer like use.
Re:Steam Box AKA (Score:4)
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Umm... I can buy premium titles online right on the box, not just some hobbyist games that existed ages before as free to play flash games?
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I had to buy a Roku box to get Netflix, so maybe I will have to buy a Steam box to get steam. Does it bother me that I should have to buy another piece of consumer hardware just to access "content" that I should be able to access with my Linux HTPC? Yes. But beggars can't be choosers.
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"does it bother me that I should have to buy another piece of consumer hardware just to access "content" that I should be able to access with my Linux HTPC?"
Linux cannot play windows games, and this is not due to some content blocks from greedy publishers.
Portal was never released onto Linux, so even if you got a Linux steam client you still could not play it.
Just install Windows on your computer if you want to play video games.
Wine (Score:2)
Linux cannot play windows games, and this is not due to some content blocks from greedy publishers. Portal was never released onto Linux
What would be the prime reason for not bothering to include a Wine box or two in your testing farm other than "some content blocks from greedy publishers"?
Just install Windows on your computer
Windows costs more than a computer. Why is that?
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1) It is hard enough, impossible really, to get all the bugs out for a single platform. Adding a few wine boxes (which would not even guaranty it works on all Linux systems) and making sure it works on them is not at all a insignificant task. Also Wine is really not all that great, you simple cannot get all games to work on it.
2) With all the MS tax, Windows is pretty much free. I personally own about 5 copies, have access to a cooperate pro version of XP, and can use any version of it for free indefinably
Alumni, OEM licensing, time vs. money (Score:2)
my university offers it to every student
Until you graduate. Or does your university also offer it to alumni?
If you wanted Windows for free You could most likely get a copy off of a friends old computer
The license for an OEM version is tied to a particular motherboard, and OEM versions aren't for home-built desktop PCs [microsoft.com].
you likely know someone whos work or school gives them access to tons of free take home versions of Windows.
But is the target market for this product dedicated enough to 1. home-build a PC and 2. traverse a friends-of-friends network to obtain a free copy of Windows for it? There's a time-money tradeoff, and I was under the impression that the target market for a game console wanted the convenience of plugging in and playing over
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"Until you graduate. Or does your university also offer it to alumni?"
Don't know, but I would hope that they would of given a big warning when I downloaded it if they planed to remotely break my computer at some point.
Can institutions do this? Is MS willing to turn off working licences for corporations?
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Play on LInux supports portal and portal 2 and can setup steam. It handles the setup for you.
Multiple logins and players on a single account (Score:5, Interesting)
What about multiple players on the same console? They are going to have to come up with a family setting, because if it is just a single login allowed then my kids will be complaining about who gets the achievements and such, and I am not going to buy multiple versions of the same game for each account on the console.
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The lack of a "family account" - being able to play multiple games off of the same account - is the only real weakness Steam has IMO.
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Try offline mode. I installed Steam on my wife's laptop and it automatically loads in offline mode and she can play any game other than online games that require Steam for multiplayer. This isn't much of an issue since she mainly sticks to single player puzzle games, I need to log into Steam once in a great while when it want's to reauthorize the account, but normally this isn't an issue since I'll have logged in to download a new game before that occurs. It's not the best solution, but it's worked just
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Personal Computer vs. Family Computer (Score:2)
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Show me data that demonstrates Valve cnsumer demographics, as compared to an average of gamers across other platforms and software..... you know...with your "facts".
I would almost bet u a teste that valves customer base is hardly more specifically as you described than gamers in general.
Never work with their entire library. (Score:2)
I wonder how they will handle it. Right now Steam is just a normal games publisher and they publish many games that do not even run without unofficial patches and customization. This is forgiveable on a PC, but on a console it is not.
Not sure this will work... (Score:2)
Spouse acceptance factor (Score:2)
why spend a bunch of money on a Valve box when you can just buy a cheaper off the shelf pc?
For one thing, a home theater PC in a specialized home theater PC case has a better wife acceptance factor than a standard minitower. For another, system requirements become easier to interpret once there's a standardized configuration.
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I don't see how you can say the hardware will be too expensive -- the latest generation of consoles (Wii excluded) were essentially priced the same as a low-end PC, and that was a number of years ago already, and that was for an oldschool-style console. People bought PS3s, there's no reason to think any price point is too high -- and Valve's box, from what they're saying, will be more versatile than the PS3 was.
Standardisation (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it's just a PC-in-a-box. However, this is something a bit more interesting in that at long last it'd set a more modern minimum spec for games. For too long PC games have been crippled graphically, as no games maker wants to lose out on the Windows XP-with-DX9 graphics crowd. If enough of these boxes are shifted it would work to further PC games in terms of graphics, as developers could assume a certain minimum level - and I'd wager it wouldn't be crusty old DX9-level graphics.
As a bonus, everyone who has a decent gaming PC already would stand to benefit from a larger pool of developers and games.
Things like this have been tried before, however. Remember MPC and MPC2? They quickly fizzled out, as did use of the Experience Index that's present in consumer versions of Windows from Vista onwards.
The main fly in the ointment is likely to be cost, however. i7s are around £230 alone in the UK and a decent midrange graphics card (like the GTX560) is another £120. A PS3 is cheaper than an i7 CPU, around £190.
Game neutering (Score:3)
My only concern for this is that Steam (one of the major forces in PC gaming) moving this direction will discourage Desktop PC game development. Instead of creating games for the latest PC hardware, developers will focus on the 'sure thing' of the Steam Box. We all know the difference in graphics, processing and gameplay between PC and console games of the same title.
The specs of the Steam Box are respectable now (my main PC doesn't have an i7, for instance) but in a few years its specs will be merely 'ok', and I'm not optimistic about being able to upgrade video components, ram or processing capabilities on it without major headaches.
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Doesn't that already happen? PC games are written for PCs which are a couple of years old, not the latest and greatest.
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Actually, most PC games are built for the contemporary consoles of the time. The few AAA PC exclusives out there tend to have much higher hardware requirements and graphical capabilities (Crysis, The Witcher 2, to name a few) than their console-ported counterparts.
Consoles (PS2 last generation, 360 this generation) are the flagship targets now.
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My only concern for this is that Steam (one of the major forces in PC gaming) moving this direction will discourage Desktop PC game development.
That doesn't seem like a sensible concern to me. These rumors indicate that the Steam Box will essentially be a normal Windows desktop PC, so it's more likely to encourage development for desktop PCs. Now, if this plan is successful, it may discourage developers from optimizing their games for bleeding-edge systems, and instead target the Steam Box specs. The rumors indicate they expect an upgrade cycle of 4 years or so, which isn't far outside of what most game developers do anyway. Also, the way this
It's great! (Score:2, Troll)
Windows. (Score:2)
TFA doesn't specify, but since this is meant to run their existing catalogue, that means Windows. Which is a shame. There was an opportunity for Valve&co to create an Android-like dedicated gaming operating system, free from licensing costs. Linux-for-games-consoles, instead of XBox-for-Steam.
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Anything Linux-based would be stuck with OpenGL. DirectX has left that in the dust a long time ago.
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If it didn't run the existing catalog, nobody would want it in the first place.
Hm.. (Score:2)
I'm a self-professed PC elitist. I've run through about every console system that's out there or been (I miss the Dreamcast, dammit..And the Saturn, oddly, but that was a Spring Break one-night-stand with itching and burning as the result), but I already have a kick-ass gaming rig, thanks! I like the idea of another choice among the Big Three, though.
Now... Am I the only person that would like to see a "Steam Games" sectional next to Nintendo and Sony in stores, though? I still like physical media, in so
Keyboard + Mouse for the livingroom TV? (Score:2)
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Windows Store/Xbox (Score:2)
Throw in XMBC while you're at it (Score:2)
This would be the killer box if XMBC was rolled in. They could even team with the Boxee crew. I'd put in my preorder today.
It's a windows PC (Score:4, Insightful)
Either way I can't see the point of it. Steam works fine as is on HDTVs. If people want to do that they can do it already.
I don't want to live on this planet anymore! (Score:2)
Why do I need this? (Score:3)
Valve has a long way to go. (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried to make my own Steam gaming box as a part of the HTPC I built over the Christmas break. First, Valve has not delivered the Steam Big Picture mode which it promised a year ago (!). This means you need to use the native Windows application navigation with small fonts that even on a big HDTV it is difficult to read and navigate. Next Steam just acts as wrapper to native Windows games so there are still installer/update issues. As my first effort I tried to get Mass Effect 1 to run on my HDTV through steam and spent a couple of hours trying to determine why the launcher would silently die. It turns out I needed to manually download a patch from EA that Steam did not automatically include and apply it along with setting the game launcher to run as administrator. Not very user friendly at all. Then, I find out that on the PC Bioware/EA crippled game controller support for Mass Effect since they want you to buy the XBox 360 version for that so it only supports native mouse/keyboard. I had to buy a third party utility, xpadder, and manually create an control schema myself that works OK with a wireless 360 controller.
With all that said, I will continue to use Steam as a lower end cloud based backup service for buying bargain games future proofed against console obsolescence. Beyond that, Steam still requires all the PC gaming overhead of troubleshooting/patching/driver updates and probably will never provide the plug and play experience the polished consoles can.
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I know plenty of people who seem to think PC gaming is this huge headache and that you have to fiddle with bunch of stuff to get each game to work, and that your PC specs must be exactly right.
And, ummmm, they're right...!
Most people don't have a clue how to maintain a Windows PC, they want a gaming box which "just works".
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Guess what, you were once a "window licker"...
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The point is that most people don't have a PC good enough, and don't like the idea of not being sure if a game will run. You get a steam box and you plug it into your TV (most people don't want to play on their small monitor or move a PC around, hell, most don't have an HDMI port and most people don't know DVI->HDMI is easy) and you load up the browser, and can play any game with 'works on steambox v1.0' stamped on it, and know it'll work, just like with a console, at a similar price point to a console.
N
Valve still has to play nice with M$ (Score:2)
Valve don't have to play nice with M$
If Valve wants to run games designed for the Windows operating system, then it has to play nice with Microsoft to get cheap copies of Windows. Otherwise, a copy of retail Windows costs as much as a whole Xbox 360 console.
Why create an open console platform when we already have one - the PC.
Because we can't guarantee that a particular make and model of PC hardware . Microsoft got in trouble when using commodity PC parts from Intel and NVIDIA in the original Xbox because it was hard to convince the suppliers to lower their unit prices over time even as processes shrank.
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The main point for gamers is that they get a standard hardware config which game developers can then target. I bet they'll also have some "designed for SteamBox" kind of logo for games, such that, if the game has it, you'll know that it runs in all its glory on that hardware.
As for price, they could drive it down even below cost by subsidizing it with sales of games.
Anyway, if you're an avid PC gamer, this is clearly not intended for you. It's for all those kids with PS or Xbox.
Re:No more stuff in my entertainment center please (Score:4, Insightful)
Depending on your setup you will need a power cable and HDMI cable to carry both audio and video. Network access could be via WiFi and wireless input devices.
If Valve keeps the platform open maybe something like XBMC could be easily packaged for deployment. Then it would need some type of remote input, but you could toss the POS Apple TV that can't output 1080p and have a nice all in one HTPC that doubles as a high powered gaming rig.
network access (Score:2)
could also be via the HDMI cable
see v. 1.4 "an HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC), which allows for a 100 Mbit/s Ethernet connection between the two HDMI connected devices so they can share an Internet connection;[174] "
(hmm, how long before we run a single ethernet cable to the TV, and then it has a router running out to our optical disc/blu ray, game console, htpc, and all other tv connected internet devices)
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I'm having some serious deja vu [wikipedia.org].
Don't we get stories like this every couple of years? And they always turn into vaporware.
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remember when Microsoft [wikipedia.org] tried to do that too? They had some success, but not in the US.
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Yeah, but Valve has a credibility - particularly in this space - that Phantom never had.
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Yup HEC is really cool, there is also the control protocol which works over HDMI so your TV's remote can send commands to attached devices all over the HDMI cable.
I really like the idea of the new Roku which is the size of a thumb drive and powers off the TV. I don't know if it supports HEC though, I thought I read it has WiFI support.
I'd be surprised is the Steam box has HEC though, no consumer video cards support CEC right now, I'd be surprised if they suddenly started supporting HEC. It's possible, but
Let me know when the Apple TV has games (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now all I have is my apple tv and TV.
Let me know when the Apple TV has games like the other iOS devices. If games aren't "worth it" to you, then you aren't the target audience. Next story.
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Someone either doesn't know what Steam is, or is trolling, or both.
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Durr, everyone and their mother would like to put a box on your tv. Have you been into this technology thing much?
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I'm guessing:
a) It runs Steam when you switch it on
b) Games will run on it without needing to tweak their configuration first
ie. It's aimed at console owners.
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To you and me, it will probably be a PC with some Windows variant installed and Steam preinstalled and autostarting.
For the console player, it will be a console that lets him play games without having to insert some CDs where he gets his games delivered online directly to console.
I think it's a pretty smart move, and I wonder why nobody had that idea before. Nothing beats the convenience of buying your games online right on your console, wait a few minutes for them to be delivered and play.
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Yeah, exactly! I don't know why they need a dedicated "box" for this, because the games that run on Steam have been developed from the start to run on a great diversity of hardware at varying levels of quality. In fact, a great investment in developer effort already went into doing this. Unlike in the case of game consoles, nobody really gains much from having an "official" box from which to run all this.
But I think the real promise behind the system, and something that the other living room competitors can
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Also if it's a pc can they have a pci-e slots so you can add a cable card tuner or a OTA tuner card? E-sata / room for more HDD's for DRV use.
A full web browser should be there, as well full web streaming so you can pick what you want / what your isp / tv providers offers.
We can call it the Steam Box - Clown Car Edition! Seriously though, you've just described any basic Home Entertainment PC. I believe the goal here is not to create a small form-factor PC that also runs Steam, but to bring PC titles directly to the living room - which means stripping the "fat" and focusing just on game delivery.
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To see why PC gaming is not dead, despite people like you saying that it's dying for over a decade now, one only needs to fire up the same game on a high-end PC gaming rig and on the latest-gen console, and compare the picture.