Valve In-Home Game Streaming Supports Windows, OS X & Linux 106
MojoKid (1002251) writes "Valve has today pushed out a new update to its Steam client on all three of the major OSes that finally takes In-home Game-Streaming out of beta. Similar to NVIDIA's GameStream, which streams native gameplay from a GeForce-equipped PC to the NVIDIA SHIELD, Valve's solution lets you stream from one PC to another, regardless of which OS it's running. What this means is you could have a SteamOS-based PC in your living-room, which is of course Linux-based, and stream games from your Windows PC in another room which ordinarily would never run under Linux. Likewise, you could stream a game from a Windows PC to an OS X machine, or vice versa."
SteamBox just got really interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
With this I can grab a little steambox for my TV in the living room and play all my steam games on that from the comfort of the sofa. No worries about having to only buy Linux compatible games as I already have a Windows PC purely for games anyway. I'll see how well this works tonight when I can stream a PC game to my Mac laptop but if it works well then I'm sold.
This is what Sony should have done with the PS4 - let users stream from their old PS3 to the PS4 rather than rely on the PSNow solution they're pushing but I guess they don't have the flexibility of a PC to do that sadly.
Re:SteamBox just got really interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty neat feature but ultimately it isn't going to help the grow the Linux and OS X game library
Not in the short term no. But it theoretically makes the linux based steambox a viable gaming platform, since windows gamers can add one next to the TV and play windows games on it.
If all goes according to valves plan, a few years down the road AAA windows game developers look up and realize there's millions of these linux steam boxes around, installed, hooked up to TVs with controllers... and suddenly realeasing a linux port doesn't seem all that risky.
Espeically if the steambox installed base is growing, while the dedicated windows gaming rigs are stagnating or declining... at some point releasing directly for steambox becomes a nobrainer.
that's the valve dream anyway. No idea if it will take off, but they've definitely put a lot of the right pieces out there to make it succeed.
Re:SteamBox just got really interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Also: There's a degradation in video quality when you stream, according to the notes. Not major, and would still allow the game to play, but it would mean that people would notice if a game is available natively for the steambox.
So it's a two-part system: Valve gets to let people play their games on their TV without having them have to buy new high-end computers, and the manufacturers will get some pushback to make it so the games run natively on the TV game-boxes.
Re:Keyboard and Mouse (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually approached this differently. I built an over the top gaming rig which had loads of noisy fans in it, was a power pig, and was physically large. Previously that would have sat under my desk in the main family living area and made it sound like a vacuum was running all the time. I used to use that for everything from games through the surfing the web. Now I stuck it in a rack I keep in my garage and I have a low power pc sat on my desk that is passively cooled 90% of the time. Wake on lan is configured and when I want to play games - click - wait 2 mins and I'm off.