SteamBox aka Steamy Gabecube aka SteamOS - The Bear and Badger

hunk

A new thread on the new Steam Box by Valve.
Anyone check out the new Steam interface yet?
It's very.........consoley.Â
Or consoledised....
Or whatever.

Is there even room for a fourth player in the console wars?

Someone at Forbes seems to think so.....Click m e

edit: added linky to make OP more interesting

WorKid

God yes.

MattyJ

I'm not sure really.

It'll be interesting seeing how Valve approach it, with the pricing of games and downloads etc. I suppose it'll be a test if a download approach will work. I can't see myself buying one right now, but will be keeping an eye on it.

hunk

Wonder what OS will form the basis of the firmware?Â
Windows? Linux?Â
Definitely interesting to see Valve make the jump to the living room. They are a huge player and definitely not one to be underestimated.

Still not convinced on the interface though.

dynamiteReady

I reckon this will turn out well. How well though, it's hard to say.

Somehow, I reckon that Oculus Rift thingy will feature in their plans... Everytime I read a story about that
thing, a name of a Valve employee invariably crops up...

hunk

Half Life 3 is coming!
Or maybe not...

hunk

The Steam Box also marks the start of the seperation of Steam and Windows.
Steam will become platform agnostic (for the most part).
I still suspect Gabe eyeing Linux to be the future home of Steam Box.Â
Makes sense financially, why pay MS royalties for windows when there's an obvious open source solution?

M0stly harm13ss

Whilst the platform agnostic bit makes sense, how about the affect that will have on the games? The number of Linux gamesÂ availableÂ on Steam is tiny in comparison to Windows isn't it?

I_R

If they could deliver a gaming PC for Â£400, it would be a good deal if people were willing to take the savings they'd make buying from Steam into account. I'd still be worried that it would be more prone than a console to falling behind technologically. What does Battlefield 3 look like on a 2007 gaming rig?

Linux makes a lot of sense in terms of ditching an expensive OS that you shouldn't need in theory if all you want to do is play games, but in practice, it seems vital for games at the moment. I don't know if Valve are big enough to change that. I wonderÂ actuallyÂ if the whole thing is a bluff aimed at MS.

regmcfly

Steam box yearly editions like iPads.

Roujin

How is this shit even going to work? Seriously?

It's a PC for the living room. Presumably it will be similar in hardware specs to the Nextbox and the PS4 and similar in price?

Will it have a disc drive? If it's a steam box and running Linux (!? srs !?) I guess it's going to be digital downloads only? So you probably aren't going to be watching any dvds on the thing.Â

Presumably devs will need to port their games to Linux to run on a steam box?

It sounds like hassle. Newell is all like 'Ooh I think PC manufacturers will be releasing PCs for the living room from next year' lots of people already have a PC for their living room, they either have a 360/PS3 or an actual PC in there already to play games on, or they have a laptop, or a tablet.Â

What sector of the market is the Steambox designed to fill? Because I can't find it.

M0stly harm13ss

2nd or 3rd console for gamers.

regmcfly

I have about 100 games on steam. If ican transfer those to a steam box and play them on my tv... Well. Boom.

Roujin

Sweet, all them Linux based games I have yet to play can finally be mine!

Edit @ Reg - You could spend as much on a steambox on the equivalent PC and just plug that into your TV and play Steam games now on your big TV, or just move your PC into the lounge and hook it up to the TV if you do lots of PC gaming already.

regmcfly

Would never move pc into lounge. Feels a bit transgressive. Have always traditionally had a pc room, want to keep it that way. For your first one, it just depends on what a Steambox costs I guess

I_R

Your back catalogue won't work though, will they?

Roujin

I imagine the steambox has to be equal or less than the next MS or Sony offering. Unless it is going to be more powerful, but if they launch with a Linux OS with the resultant smaller catalogue of games are people going to opt for it over one of the 3 main consoles?

Yossarian

Am I the only one here thinking that SteamBox sounds like a gay sauna?

Roujin

No.

But I'm going to exhaust all the other avenues of logical reasoning as to why it will probably be shit before I round on the name. Anyway it's a less gay name than WiiU.

dynamiteReady

Roujin wrote:

How is this shit even going to work? Seriously? It's a PC for the living room. Presumably it will be similar in hardware specs to the Nextbox and the PS4 and similar in price? Will it have a disc drive? If it's a steam box and running Linux (!? srs !?) I guess it's going to be digital downloads only? So you probably aren't going to be watching any dvds on the thing.Â Presumably devs will need to port their games to Linux to run on a steam box? It sounds like hassle. Newell is all like 'Ooh I think PC manufacturers will be releasing PCs for the living room from next year' lots of people already have a PC for their living room, they either have a 360/PS3 or an actual PC in there already to play games on, or they have a laptop, or a tablet.Â What sector of the market is the Steambox designed to fill? Because I can't find it.

This is my opinion exactly (except for the Linux bit, because it'll mean FA to the user).

My mate showed me his Apple TV thing the otherday... Shit was dope.

If someone made a set to box with a Wi-Fi / Net connection,Â integratedÂ net based TV, a proper games channel, decent graphics and an optional retina seering headset for Â£220 or less, then I would buy it*

Especially for the chance to play Half Life 3.

What's more, web based TV works surprisingly well these days... If I was minted, I'd buy a web TV box over an equivalently pricedÂ blue rayÂ player...

But if that was all that Valve released, I would be fucking surprised...

This thing will turn out to be quite nifty...Â

You'll see.

*Hmm That sounds suspiciously like an XBOX 360...

Roujin

Hardware potentially by multiple hardware manufacturers though? A new platform using a new OS that could potentially pack a greater hardware punch than equivalent hardware available at the time?Â

I'm having flashbacks to the 3DO.

Mod74

dynamiteReady wrote:

This is my opinion exactly (except for the Linux bit, because it'll mean FA to the user).

I think it will matter to the end user.

1A96g

hunk

I guess Valve is thinking; "Build it and they will come"?
The Linux Box that is.

I_R

They really need to get a lot further down the road with Linux games before I can see this working, even if they do manage a miraculously low price. No EA either, how long before the other big publishers follow that stance.

n0face

I want one, then again I've always had a bit of a hard on for valve. As described by Gonzo is my wet dream of a console. If it played the valve noise when you turned it on if probably explode with excitement.

pantyfire

There's something niggling away at me re this thing. Something saying "How would it work?". But I can't quite put my finger on what it is exactly that is making me doubt.

I don't see how they are going to deliver the performance that a Â£900 rig can bring, which for me, is the reason to buy a gaming PC, for less than Â£400.
Or maybe it has something to do with the impression I have of the PC market. For me a market driven by constant hardware change and evolution. But this thing by nature would appear to be a little more static. I certainly wouldn't be buying a new Steambox at, let's say, Â£300 every year to keep up to pace.Â
But then if the rumours are true then the Nextbox is probably just going to be a cut down PC, so why wouldn't this work?

I guess if this was released around the same time as the Nextbox for maybe Â£100 more but could still blow it out the water playing games at stupid res and silky frame rates a year after release then I am in.

Skerret

The move to cloud gaming was supposed to remove the need for anything other than a basic terminal and may yet. Â Anyway, solves the problem dunnit. Â SteamLive?

hunk

It could be that Valve has been eyeing Google and their work on Android.
As of late it's no secret Valve hasn't been too happy with their Windows overlords and by now they're thinking: if Google can do it, so can we?
That is take Linux, develop it, mold it to your liking and integrate it with your own hardware. Google did it, no reason Valve can't either.

And why not, MS has been quite vague about allowing 3rd party stores in Windows8 which would potentially leave the steam store out in the cold hampered by its lo-visibility. How is Steam to thrive in such an environment? Perhaps it can't and therefore the only solution is to launch your own hardware platform.

RamSteelwood

i think the question really is whether they could get the library of PC games onto it. Â if they just go linux 'as is' and hope developers follow them and start devloping for linux, then it's a big gamble... if they go with windows then they're just selling a valve branded pc with steam pre-installed, and you can't really see microsoft doing them too many favours if it's stepping on their xbox's toes, and again i think that will be a bit of a hard sell...the magical third option would be if they could develop their own OS based on linux, with their own hardware APIs and interfaces through steam framework, and in a way that it's really easy for developers to migrate from microsoft's directX type stuff...so you end up with a 'free' OS not tied to microsoft (so more of the cost can be on hardware), but all the 'windows PC' games on steam will work on it, so you can keep your existing library and not miss out on future 'PC' games too. Â then i think people would get excited.

pantyfire

Skerret wrote:

The move to cloud gaming was supposed to remove the need for anything other than a basic terminal and may yet. Â Anyway, solves the problem dunnit. Â SteamLive?

Not for a little while yet.
If you want sub par PS3 gaming in a small window with input lag and stalls then cloud gaming is your answer right now.

pantyfire

@RamÂ
You've touched on something else making it all bit huh hmmm to me.Â

Option 1 - they are relying on devs to code specifically for it. So it's basically another console that might be easier to port to. But you still need devs to be arsed to do it. So not the magic PC gaming bullet I am after.Â

Option 2 - The magic bullet. Â But like you say, massively treading on MS's toes, so I can't see that happening and besides its declared Linux innit?

Option 3 - see option 1.

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