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Steam to Chrome OS

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111–120 of 127 posts

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#111
post #25

My ideal dev machine would be chromeOS running on apple silicon.

I tired chromeOS a few times as a dev machine and was always disappointed. Thing is, OSX doesn’t really get in my way using just a terminal, web browser, and spotlight. Installing stuff can be annoying at times compared to Linux, but it was even worse on chrome (basically didn’t work). I ended up ssh’d to a remote vps on chromeOS to get things done.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#112
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Remote Play regularly (bed-bound lots due to medical issues) and never had a problem, but have found it’s finicky on your setup. Eg it never really worked on my ISP-provided modem/router but once I got a UDM (for unrelated reasons) it worked flawlessly and has ever since. The fact I can lie in bed with laptop plugged into bedroom TV and use a PS4 controller to play games running on my gaming PC in another room…

What is a UDM? And I believe you. I wish I knew what the variables were. I really wanted to like Remote Play and even got special hardware for it (Steam Link, Shield TV, etc.) and still couldn't get it to be reliable.

Yeah as alphager said, it’s a router by Ubiquiti that solved a lot of my networking issues. I wish I knew what exactly it was that made Remote Play work, but that was just one of the many things that didn’t work before then I realised later suddenly worked with my new router.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#113
post #28

You'd think they would want to double- and triple-down on their cloud gaming platform, Stadia, for Chromebooks. But there's also good reason to believe that platform won't be going the distance so perhaps this is another signal in that direction.

What's that even mean? It's cloud gaming which means you can access it from a Chrome window.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#114
A few years ago (around 2015-2016), I got Counter Strike: Global Offensive running on my x86 Chromebook using Chrubuntu. The experience was about as good as one would expect, but it was still a fun time

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels to me like the only logical economic future for game streaming is as a value add for a game subscription service (so like, xgp and xcloud as a logical pairing).

$100 or so a year for a game steaming service is a heck lot cheaper than a gaming PC and a graphics card update every few years. And you can play anywhere, on any device, where you have a fast connection. It was a godsend for me before I could afford a gaming PC (or find one, during the pandemic)

> $100 or so a year for a game steaming service is a heck lot cheaper than a gaming PC and a graphics card update every few years.

You are not going to compete with high end hardware/graphics using Stadia, not sure if that was solved but for quite some time they just upscaled to the promised resolution instead of actually rendering it.

Everyone casual will be kicked to the next set of consumer hardware by Microsoft(Windows 11 incompatible) or Google (required native codec support for some android apps) either way.

That $100 or so (definitely way more) is going to go on top of the hardware upgrade treadmill, not as alternative to it.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I doubt Windows ABIs are better than Linux native ones on their own long term wise Lots of games from the early 2000s still run as-is on Windows 10/11, and many games have updated versions on Steam or gog.com as well. However, the real question for Linux is: is there any comparable long-term stable distribution format for Linux games other than Windows binaries? If so, how popular is it?

> is there any comparable long-term stable distribution format for Linux games Only Steam provides such a runtime, but outside of Steam you're out of luck.

The steam linux runtime is open-source with a license that reads much like the MIT license, so you need not run anything Steam proprietary if you don't like Steam.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#117
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about Windows long term support, it's about Wine long term support (which is much better than Windows own). So I agree with your point that long term Wine offers better support than Linux native ABIs. I doubt Windows ABIs are better than Linux native ones on their own long term wise (i.e. without Wine). That said, it would be cool for someone to develop Wine-like wrapping of historic Linux ABIs into modern o…

> I doubt Windows ABIs are better than Linux native ones on their own long term wise Lots of games from the early 2000s still run as-is on Windows 10/11, and many games have updated versions on Steam or gog.com as well. However, the real question for Linux is: is there any comparable long-term stable distribution format for Linux games other than Windows binaries? If so, how popular is it?

> Lots of games from the early 2000s still run as-is on Windows 10/11, and many games have updated versions on Steam or gog.com as well.

Actually, it's the other way around. Old windows games run fine in Proton, and have weird issues in Windows.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#118
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then the next step is that Google Cloud offers you an on demand high end gaming machine, pay by the minute, which runs Steam on Windows x86 and has an instant VPN to your Chromebook. I find it difficult to believe they'd offer this, given that they already have Stadia. I do see how this could be more appealing for consumers, but aside from competing with themselves, I also would be curious about the economics. Cons…

Google never really tried with stadia. It's just another dead Google product, now changing into some sort of B2B thing. Shrug. Meanwhile Nvidia kept improving geforce now and it's actually really good now, running on everything from operating systems to browsers with no noticeable lag. Cheap too, like $15 a mo or so, and works with most of your Steam library. Where it doesn't, usually means that the publisher wanted…

Google is even worse than Apple in what concerns talking to game developers, they always focus on the Play Store and KPIs, and seldom focus on the tools.

Even when they really try (see last week Games Development Summit), it is mostly about high level stuff, like PMs talking to PMs, handwaving to lightweight docs and github repos.

Naturally very few game devs ever get enthusiastic from whatever comes out of Google.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#119
post #28

You'd think they would want to double- and triple-down on their cloud gaming platform, Stadia, for Chromebooks. But there's also good reason to believe that platform won't be going the distance so perhaps this is another signal in that direction.

I don't know enough about Steam

... does Steam provide any sort of services that manage the runtime of games or is the majority of the game still dependent on the users rig? remote GPU workloads/rendering, managing game-play coordination, etc?

If not, then it sounds like working with google (maybe others too) to get Steam running on ChromeOS is a fantastic idea that doesn't conflict with any of their own ambitions.

It's good for google bc you'll potentially attract more users to ChromeOS and once they're on ChromeOS, I'm sure they'll have more exposure to Stadia and other google services. Moreover, as game developers and platforms start to migrate a lot of their workloads to the cloud, Steam might be able to provide a more seamless way to do so (proton?)... again, potentially using google services or even the Stadia backend to do so.

It's good for Valve bc if furthers their independence from Windows. It may also lower the barrier and provide access to individuals that don't have the money or access to expense machines and OSes, especially if the compute intense operations can be offloaded to GPU services in the cloud.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#120
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 or so a year for a game steaming service is a heck lot cheaper than a gaming PC and a graphics card update every few years. And you can play anywhere, on any device, where you have a fast connection. It was a godsend for me before I could afford a gaming PC (or find one, during the pandemic)

> $100 or so a year for a game steaming service is a heck lot cheaper than a gaming PC and a graphics card update every few years. You are not going to compete with high end hardware/graphics using Stadia, not sure if that was solved but for quite some time they just upscaled to the promised resolution instead of actually rendering it. Everyone casual will be kicked to the next set of consumer hardware by Microsoft(W…

Not Stadia maybe but GeForce Now gets you a 3080 and 120Hz (not necessarily fps) at 4k.

But sorry, it's apparently $200 a year now, not $100. My bad.

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