Valve: Steam Machines Won't Be Only Nvidia Hardware

[ojas]

The tom's community is weird. First, we spent years complaining about M$ and how the only reason we're using Windows is for games, and now that someone is trying to provide an alternative, we're going to hate on it, without knowing the full story.

The official spec has not even reached Beta yet, the OS will be released for public scrutiny by the end of the year, and the controller is something no one's attempted to commercialize before.

We should seriously wait for the platform to be finalized and not jump to conclusions.

I'm optimistic, rather have Valve guiding the PC's future than M$ at this point.

I still don't get the excitement, we already know SteamOS will install on PC hardware, if you already run Steam on Windows then you know it will run SteamOS. What bores me is all the excitement over reference hardware for machines that will cost double a capable games PC and gimp your collection

back, you troll nonstop and spread around misinformation about topics you know absolutely nothing about. The price and specifications have only been released for the Piston and that's not even an official Steam box. No one knows how they will be priced or perform yet. Not everyone wants to shell out $100 for an overpriced and overrated, and overbloated operating system just to play games.

Also, Tom's needs to stop posting pictures of the Piston as it is being associated with Valve Steam Machines which it is not.

This, a thousand times over.

Everyone also forgets that what costs $600 today, will likely cost $400 next year, especially when mass-produced.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

I think a lot of people are expecting all of their Steam games to run on SteamOS or a Steam Machine. That's not going to happen for a lot of Windows DirectX games. Games that are DirectX 9 can be emulated with Wine (it's not an emulator, yeah, whatever), but I don't think Wine supports DX10 or 11. If Valve hasn't solved this problem, or secured a DirectX license (unlikely), you're left with the same options you currently have for Linux gaming -- you can play OpenGL games or DX9 Windows games through Wine.

The point is that it can stream games from your main windows PC, so it doesnt need wine or anything. The steam box ,for me, should be designed with lower end hardware, so it can play some native linux games, and stream more intensive games from your main PC to your tv. i would be interested, but just in steam OS, not a Steam box. Most steam users know how to build their own PC, and probably have a 2nd pc lying around from their last upgrade that they could use to install it on., which is what i plan to do with Steam OS.

 

[back_by_demand]

JD88, who died and made you the forum police? It's hardly trolling, plus I don't need a listed price to know that the reference specs for the 300 machines are all going to be costly. The vast majority of my Steam collection ran perfectly well on the rig I owned prior to my current rig, a lowly Core2Duo with a Radeon X1950 and 2Gb ram. Seeing as the games available through SteamOS will be devoid of high-powered AAA titles and SteamOS should use much less system resources than Windows then remind me again why we should be excited about new spec hardware. Now if somebody from Valve were to issue a statement for "minimum system requirement" rather than a rather obvious attempt to sell new hardware it wouldn't seem so bad. I already have a fantastic rig and i'm sure the 10% of my collection that actually works will work very well, but for the people out there that have old hardware and don't want to buy new hardware, exactly how far down the food chain will it work?

 

[JD88]

JD88, who died and made you the forum police? It's hardly trolling, plus I don't need a listed price to know that the reference specs for the 300 machines are all going to be costly. The vast majority of my Steam collection ran perfectly well on the rig I owned prior to my current rig, a lowly Core2Duo with a Radeon X1950 and 2Gb ram. Seeing as the games available through SteamOS will be devoid of high-powered AAA titles and SteamOS should use much less system resources than Windows then remind me again why we should be excited about new spec hardware. Now if somebody from Valve were to issue a statement for "minimum system requirement" rather than a rather obvious attempt to sell new hardware it wouldn't seem so bad. I already have a fantastic rig and i'm sure the 10% of my collection that actually works will work very well, but for the people out there that have old hardware and don't want to buy new hardware, exactly how far down the food chain will it work?

Again, misinformation. What's your source that Steam OS will be devoid of AAA titles? At launch, perhaps but that remains to be seen.

As for the other part, you make a decent point. Old boxes could be turned into consoles for streaming and playing older Valve titles and so forth. The minimum specs for streaming especially would be important.

 

[back_by_demand]

An old obsolete PC would be ideal, why is this OS being viewed as an opportunity to get a Haswell with a Titan? If you don't balk at the cost of a $1000 GPU then reservations over the cost of Windows disappear, because functionality is not even in question.

 

[JD88]

Where it makes sense is at the $500-600 price point. You can build a PC that rivals the consoles for that amount if you aren't paying for the OS. Perhaps even best them if you are mass producing them. Don't need anything better than that until 4K TVs are prevalent anyway. Even then the other consoles won't be playing at that resolution.

 

[hapkido]

Where it makes sense is at the $500-600 price point. You can build a PC that rivals the consoles for that amount if you aren't paying for the OS. Perhaps even best them if you are mass producing them. Don't need anything better than that until 4K TVs are prevalent anyway. Even then the other consoles won't be playing at that resolution.

I don't see a Steam Machine making sense at all other than a secondary gaming PC/Console. There is absolutely no incentive for XB and PS players to switch to a PC-console that costs as much or more, and won't have titles like Battlefield 4.

What exactly is Valve doing new? They're influencing better Linux GPU driver support from Nvidia and AMD; and they're probably providing a more user-friendly Linux distro. I do think both of those things are great.

However, that doesn't change the fact most PC games use DirectX and Linux can't play DX10 and DX11 games. I don't see Valve having enough influence to sway EA and Activision to have their studios switch to OpenGL. And EA doesn't release their new games on Steam anyway.

If you mostly want to play Valve and id games, a Steam Machine will suit your needs. If you already have a gaming PC to stream from, hate EA, and want a second machine, a Steam Machine will suit your needs. For everyone else, they're better off either buying a console, or building their own Windows-based HTPC, IMO. That might change in the future, but that's the state of PC gaming right now.