Rumor: Steam Machines Launching At GDC 2015

[exfileme]

Here's another Steam Machine rumor.

Rumor: Steam Machines Launching At GDC 2015 : Read more

 

[Grognak]

I can't imagine a reason why Steam Machines would succeed. Disregarding the fact that they're long overdue and that the feedback on the controller has been lukewarm, there's no reason for anyone to buy them at that price with SteamOS. If the difference between a glorified console and a fully functional PC is $100, I'd rather go Windows.

 

[Engineer123]

it's not a "rumour", confirmed already in November by Doug Lombardi, Quoted "...a large Steam-Machine presence at GDC 2015" to techradar.com

Also: they have a huge booth there, look at the floorplan and they are among the few Diamond Partners of GDC.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/steam-controller-design-reportedly-finalized-more-/1100-6424515/

OriginPC CEO confirms that Steam-controller is finalized and ready for production.

What will Valve surely unveal at the GDC 2015:
- the final Steam-Controller
- official release date for the Steam-Machines, their specs and pricing

Maybe, but not impossible at all:
- a new Valve game which is bundled for free with every Steam-Machine

Get hyped!

 

[airborn824]

I can't imagine a reason why Steam Machines would succeed. Disregarding the fact that they're long overdue and that the feedback on the controller has been lukewarm, there's no reason for anyone to buy them at that price with SteamOS. If the difference between a glorified console and a fully functional PC is $100, I'd rather go Windows.

Well PC gaming is growing at an un-measurable rate. To think you can get all the AAA titles on a machine than literally can do it all makes sense. To be honest once Steam Machines launch, only the great exclusives from Nintendo will separate PC consoles from the others. We will start to see Microsoft open up Halo and other games to PC and XBOX as they win on both fronts. But i do believe that steam machines should dual boot Windows 10. Valve will continue to grow the OS till it has music, video, and browsing. Cheers to finally real competition.

 

[Bowmaster]

I can't imagine a reason why Steam Machines would succeed. Disregarding the fact that they're long overdue and that the feedback on the controller has been lukewarm, there's no reason for anyone to buy them at that price with SteamOS. If the difference between a glorified console and a fully functional PC is $100, I'd rather go Windows.

Well PC gaming is growing at an un-measurable rate. To think you can get all the AAA titles on a machine than literally can do it all makes sense. To be honest once Steam Machines launch, only the great exclusives from Nintendo will separate PC consoles from the others. We will start to see Microsoft open up Halo and other games to PC and XBOX as they win on both fronts. But i do believe that steam machines should dual boot Windows 10. Valve will continue to grow the OS till it has music, video, and browsing. Cheers to finally real competition.

One potential problem is certain companies, like EA, who may continue to refuse to allow their new products on Steam OR companies like Ubisoft who allow for purchases on Steam but then require Uplay. IDK, maybe you can still launch those clients out of SteamOS which would solve the issue, but I don't know if I've seen anything definitive. With that said, I'd love to see it succeed!

 

[Bloob]

I can't imagine a reason why Steam Machines would succeed. Disregarding the fact that they're long overdue and that the feedback on the controller has been lukewarm, there's no reason for anyone to buy them at that price with SteamOS. If the difference between a glorified console and a fully functional PC is $100, I'd rather go Windows.

Steam machines are fully functional PCs.

 

[TechyInAZ]

I believe your forgetting a point about "PC gaming is better". One of the key aspects of pc game is the keyboard and mouse. Mouse and Keyboard offer better performance and accuracy than controllers on a number of games.

I'm not saying that I hate controllers, ill still use controllers every now and then. But it seems strange to do console (controller) gaming on a PC. However if this steam controller actually is just as good as a mouse then I will change my mind.

 

[Vlad Rose]

With the Steam machine, you should be able to do both mouse+keyboard and game controller still; just like a PC. I do know that some games I own on steam I'd hate to play on a keyboard+mouse (Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter IV, etc), same with trying a controller on other games (FPS, RTS, or MOBAs for example). I can see this controller helping with at least one of those genres (FPS) if their touchpad thingie on it works well enough. It could be a good compromise to having 2 separate gaming setups.

 

[stevejnb]

I still don't see the need for these devices, outside of the absent license fee and the bragging rights of "ZOMG ITS NOT WINDOWS I MUST HAVE IT!" for an audience that takes their fandom - or anti-fandom - to Apple drone levels.

PC gaming on Windows machines is, as it stands, pretty close to a truly open platform. Steam exists on a Windows platform, instituting its DRM and making profits entirely independent of any MS heavy-handedness stymying them in any way. Indie games ranging from Minecraft (hey, it WAS indie when I started on it) to To The Moon have flourished on it. Anyone can build pretty much any game, any gaming service, any way they want on Windows. PC gaming has developed in pretty much any way game developers have wanted it to without them being beholden to Windows, and Windows has been host to dozens of non-Microsoft distributors and revolution after revolution on a gaming friendly but gaming agnostic Windows platform. What is the ill in Windows gaming that you think SteamOS is going to fix? What does SteamOS add to this beyond appeasing the "WE HATE MICROSOFT BECAUSE IT'S MICROSOFT!" crowd?

Valve's great accomplishments in gaming are Half Life and making a bunch of PC gamers who will torrent a movie because they don't like the look of the FBI warning at the start actually embrace DRM and all of their games being tied to one company. Personally, the moment a company that makes most of its money from putting ALL games they associate with under a DRM wall wants to create a whole OS suggesting all games should run under their watchful eye, I get a bit worried. However benign they look for now, doesn't anyone else see the problem here? A DRM company that make you access every single game through their app store wants to make your OS - and the PC gaming community is rushing to *embrace* this and heralding it as a great step forward? Will we all be happier once, rather than having the pretty much open gaming platform, you sign in to Steam for EVERYTHING? As it stands, Windows says "make your game, we don't care what you do with it. We make our money, you make yours." Valve says "make your game, use our DRM, give us a cut." Valve in charge of a gaming is good in your eyes?

I really don't support SteamOS. Let a company that doesn't put DRM on EVERY game they touch, and get a cut of every game's profit, be the shepherd of gaming. Doesn't have to be MS by any means - but a DRM company that makes you access every single game in your library through their app store? Their profit model just screams conflict of interest to me when it comes to controlling a whole OS. I'm amazed that so many PC gamers hate Microsoft so much they seem to either miss or willfully ignore this point.

 

[Merry_Blind]

Since the controllers isn't symmetrical anymore anyway, I don't understand why they don't get rid of the left touch pad. A thumbsticks is perfect for movement in any 3D game, and D-Pad is perfect for movement in any 2D game or interface. Right touch pad is useful for aiming since it's supposedly more precise than thumbsticks.

So yeah... no point in having two touchpads, and omitting the D-Pad completely is stupid.

 

[GreaseMonkey_62]

I think the biggest detriment right now will be that it's running on Linux which still has a really small gaming usage. People are going to want to play (insert popular game) and find out it won't run on SteamOS. Unless Steam has addressed this issue somehow.

 

[dovah-chan]

We don't like Windows because of the direction it's heading. Can't wait for Cortana to being feeding all my info to microsoft. It's like having spyware built into your OS. You could just throw the "but just use Windows 7" argument but I believe 7 is becoming antiquated. It's almost 6 years old and I think people need to move to a new OS or stop whining and use classic shell on 8.1.

Also you forget that it's not particularly Valve that instigates the DRM themselves, but the agreement with them and the publishers. The reason why so many people stand behind Valve is because they trust them to do the right thing. Yes your concerns are legitimate but you forget that SteamOS is open source with bits of proprietary code that is confidential to Valve due to it most likely being steam components. So they don't necessarily control their own OS fully. If it's as close to it's Debian roots as I'd like to think then I can see myself running a file server in the background while playing source. Also if a company couldn't get a cut of the profits how could it operate without donations which aren't guaranteed sources of income? To get something you have to give up something. That's a rule of life that some of us should learn to accept.

 

[KrazyPilot]

LoL, only reason they want to release a Controller, with an OS that can be navigated easily with a controller (especially an xbox 360 one) is to target the console consumers (in my opinion are not very smart, but hey just my opinion) because they would feel more at home with such a system, and be able to gradually (because those who dont understand, get scared, LOL) get into and easily learn how to game from a PC, maybe even learn that a keyboard/mouse combo is superior to a console based controller.. Also, learn that graphics ARE important and that PC based GPU is eons above their simple Console based hardware....

 

[jtd871]

Mouse and keyboard are fine for your desk - not so much for the couch. The controller is there to get away from the keyboard and mouse for the ten-foot interface. I belive that the controller with all its buttons and touch pads can emulate both keyboard and mouse input if needed. I would imagine that Steam OS will be optimized to require as little interaction via mousing and keyboard input (even emulated) as possible - something still not possible on Windows unless you have a tablet set up as a "second screen" and remote input device. I am not sure that this last is yet possible for vanilla Windows, although Steiger Dynamics touts some sort of this functionality with their gaming HTPCs. In any case, using a tablet as a controller unless it has dedicated buttons and stick input (a la super Wiimote) would probably be very unsatisfactory for a lot of gaming.

The other points of Steam OS as mentioned above is that the OS is designed to be not as busy (have as many background processes) as Windows to permit more utilization of hardware resources, and as a protest against the potential for a "Windows Store uber alles" walled garden buying model.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no Valve evangelist. But I do appreciate that they are trying hard and seem to have had some influence on Microsoft.

 

[The3monitors]

Honestly my laptop can play mgs v ground zeroes on high graphics. (This is on a intel 2000 vid card) i can play most other games without any problems. That includes Mortal kombat komplete. I have a 3770k desktop with a powerful vid card in it. No. Thats it no.

 

[mamasan2000]

I hope this takes off so I can move full-time to Linux.
Games are the only and last reason for me to use Windows. More native linux games and a bit better peripheral support like force feedback in certain games like euro truck sim 2 and I'm transfering for good. Hopefully new OpenGL gives a nice little push too.

 

[akira2300]

I have a gaming desktop that I built, and I think that if done right, Steam machines can succeed big time. If I had the disposable income, I'd buy one of the forthcoming boxes in addition to my PC but it would have to have several demanding key features which I'm not sure will be present, at least in early iterations, and which may require windows: a large variety of titles from the Steam store including older games and the ability to play Early Access titles (I play lots of Early Access games; a big part of my PC gaming experience); the ability to connect to my PC to offload games and free up storage space, then quickly upload them (Valve should offer their own version of a SteamMover type tool), or add game saves, skins, and custom config files; option for background downloading during play and low-power idle mode where the system can be left on and download game updates as they are published; this one is big - the ability to play at least the most popular mods for major games like HL-2 (Valve should create a new SDK that fixes issues with many of the older mods that were broken with Steam Pipe); Uplay and Origin integration; keyboard and mouse support to play FPSs like Counter-Strike and RTSs just as precisely as can be played on desktop; good headset support for online, preferably with teamspeak integration; a nice web browser to quickly bring up review sites, walkthroughs, etc. - ideally Chrome including certain extensions/apps like ad-blocker, evernote, etc.; good integration of the Steam forums and other community features; apps for streaming media like Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, and ideally the ability to stream music playlists from computer as on xbox; lightweight, nice form factor, with 4 controller support; an API so software developers could build apps and modify certain existing desktop software - let's say mumblecore - to work on Steam machines; and finally, a big one, excellent video-capture and twitch.tv streaming support with the ability to plug in an external HDD or SSD for storage. All these things I'd pay $500-$800 for, negotiable - third parties would swarm to the machine and nobody would have a proper excuse to play consoles again.

 

[chlamchowder]

I'm part of the crowd that can't see the argument for a steam machine. If you're into PC gaming, you can save money by building one PC that handles both gaming and work. If you want to use a controller, there are controllers (i.e. Xbox One) that work with Windows. And if you want access to as many games as possible, whatever's available on Steam is a subset of what's available on a Windows/Linux dual boot setup (unless Steam OS exclusives appear in the future, which seems unlikely).

On top of that, all the steam machines I see so far are ones that can easily be outperformed at a lower price by a self-built PC, or use low end graphics cards and low power CPUs that I wouldn't want to game (or work) with anyways.

Finally, for those of you who don't like locked-down consoles, doesn't Steam OS effectively make the system more locked down than a PC with the current Steam client on either Windows or Linux?

 

[wiinippongamer]

gonna be a Ricochet 2 bundle if anything

 

[akira2300]

You're right in all these respects. It's simply the prospect of having the convenience of the Steam store + community (which is actually very impressive if you think about it) in one small dedicated box that's portable, doesn't require manual updating of drivers or managing of background processes or antivirus, or any other kind of oversight. In reality that won't be the case, there will always be shortcomings and issues, but I can see how, if done well, it could be lucrative to a lot of people who always found their store bought PCs unable to play the newest games, yet who don't have an inclination to learn about graphics cards and all that.

I'm part of the crowd that can't see the argument for a steam machine. If you're into PC gaming, you can save money by building one PC that handles both gaming and work. If you want to use a controller, there are controllers (i.e. Xbox One) that work with Windows. And if you want access to as many games as possible, whatever's available on Steam is a subset of what's available on a Windows/Linux dual boot setup (unless Steam OS exclusives appear in the future, which seems unlikely).

On top of that, all the steam machines I see so far are ones that can easily be outperformed at a lower price by a self-built PC, or use low end graphics cards and low power CPUs that I wouldn't want to game (or work) with anyways.

Finally, for those of you who don't like locked-down consoles, doesn't Steam OS effectively make the system more locked down than a PC with the current Steam client on either Windows or Linux?

 

[Bloob]

I'm part of the crowd that can't see the argument for a steam machine. If you're into PC gaming, you can save money by building one PC that handles both gaming and work. If you want to use a controller, there are controllers (i.e. Xbox One) that work with Windows. And if you want access to as many games as possible, whatever's available on Steam is a subset of what's available on a Windows/Linux dual boot setup (unless Steam OS exclusives appear in the future, which seems unlikely).

On top of that, all the steam machines I see so far are ones that can easily be outperformed at a lower price by a self-built PC, or use low end graphics cards and low power CPUs that I wouldn't want to game (or work) with anyways.

Finally, for those of you who don't like locked-down consoles, doesn't Steam OS effectively make the system more locked down than a PC with the current Steam client on either Windows or Linux?

IIRC SteamOS is a fully open OS, so you are not tied to Steam. The UX is just optimized for Steam and TV. I guess the allure of SteamOS is saving about $200 on a Windows license if you build your own systems.

P.S. On the matter of closed down ecosystems, I wonder when the EU will force the mobile OSs to allow third party stores.

 

[chlamchowder]

IIRC SteamOS is a fully open OS, so you are not tied to Steam. The UX is just optimized for Steam and TV. I guess the allure of SteamOS is saving about $200 on a Windows license if you build your own systems.

P.S. On the matter of closed down ecosystems, I wonder when the EU will force the mobile OSs to allow third party stores.

SteamOS might be fully open (not completely sure about that), but Linux is also fully open, and Windows is effectively fully open (API is public, though source isn't, and practically all PC games run on Windows). On the other side, "optimized for Steam and TV" suggests using it as a work computer too will be clunky at best. Linux/Windows do well with both games and work.

Saving $200 on a Windows license doesn't mean much if you end up needing a separate computer for work. A sub-$200 computer is possible, but I wouldn't want to deal with one. Also, a Win8.1 license costs $120. Unless you really need a specific thing that Win8.1 Pro offers, there's little reason to spend $200.

P.S. for mobile OSes, why not just develop for all three? Visual Studio 2015 is going to support Android, Windows, and iOS, though you'll need a Mac to compile/run emulator for iOS stuff (screw Apple). If the EU forces third party stores, fireworks will follow.

 

[chlamchowder]

You're right in all these respects. It's simply the prospect of having the convenience of the Steam store + community (which is actually very impressive if you think about it) in one small dedicated box that's portable, doesn't require manual updating of drivers or managing of background processes or antivirus, or any other kind of oversight. In reality that won't be the case, there will always be shortcomings and issues, but I can see how, if done well, it could be lucrative to a lot of people who always found their store bought PCs unable to play the newest games, yet who don't have an inclination to learn about graphics cards and all that.

That's true. Getting a prebuilt machine that's not stuffed with bloatware would be attractive. However, there are some other issues:
- Drivers - that's....because there aren't drivers to update to. Nvidia/AMD focus on Windows drivers first. Linux drivers tend to trail behind at best, and are completey broken at worst. I don't trust OEMs to write/maintain drivers either.
- A Steam Machine isn't exactly portable. In addition to the machine/power cord, you need a display and input devices. A min-ITX machine doesn't seem far off. A gaming laptop is much more portable, if potentially more expensive.
- A lot of low end Steam Machines won't be able to push 60 fps at 1080p with the latest titles.

TL;DR - The concept is fine, but I have little confidence in OEMs to execute it well.

 

[mamasan2000]

AMD/Nvidia drivers are both up to date currently.

AMDs Omegas and Nvidias 346's are out for Linux.

Nvidia is quick in releasing proprietary drivers, AMD tends to lag behind. cata14.9 was the last stable release before Omegas. There might have been some beta-drivers but I can't remember.

I'm not so worried about AMD/Nvidia releasing drivers in a timely fashion, I'm more worried about peripheral drivers. Wheels, gamepads, that sort of thing.

 

[photonboy]

Why the Steambox will succeed...

Valve doesn't need the Steambox to be a hit right away. They can simply keep making the software better, the manufacturers can make the hardware better, and we'll get more games as time goes on.

If we get enough adoption it's possible the PS5 and XB2 will have a hard time finding a place in 2020.

Adopters can also just throw on Windows and move the PC into their office if they decide which is actually a great idea if upgrading to a new Steam machine later.