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Steam releases Big Picture mode

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam releases Big Picture mode

#61

Post by adam-a »

tarice wrote: post #30

Watching this, I'm reminded of the OUYA. Isn't this exactly what they were trying to accomplish? In fact, it seems to me that Valve's Big Picture, combined with the ability to "make your own Steambox", completely trumps the OUYA. Why would a game developer want to create a new port of their game to a completely new system when they could just optionally add controller support and publish to Steam? Valve's got the pla…

Ouya has a much lower barrier to entry than Steam, which is none. Anyone can publish a game to the Ouya market (at least that's my understanding) but for an indie developer, getting a game on steam can be quite difficult. See the recently launched Greenlight website and how many games are on that, trying to get published on Steam[0]. I think the ease of publishing will attract a lot of developers, in the same way that iOS/Android grabbed smaller developers that couldn't get on the old consoles.

[0] http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/browse/?browsefilter=m...

Re: Steam releases Big Picture mode

#63

Post by Shish2k »

10098 wrote: post #10

Make a console, Valve!

I'd think it's fairly obvious that that's their step after next :P

(the immediate next step being "make the linux games catalog decently large", so they don't need to bloat their $300 console with an extra $150 of MS licensing)

On a tangent -- does anyone know how developing games for linux compares to developing games for consoles? I've heard windows devs complain about linux ("Braid will never be available on linux because ALSA is shit and fundamentally can't handle it", etc etc), but it seems that the valve console'd be more competing against the PS4 / xbox720 / etc, and I wonder if those devkits are better or worse...

Re: Steam releases Big Picture mode

#64

Post by Already__Taken »

xxbondsxx wrote: post #31
AshleysBrain wrote: post #26

I'm a HTML5 game dev so not really positioned to comment on the main story, but I did try out the Big Picture browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; Valve Steam Tenfoot/2095; ) AppleWebKit/535.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.989.0 Safari/535.11 So, Chrome 18. What is it with Chrome 18 given Chrome for Android is also stuck on that version? Maybe coincidence and slow release cycles... (Also, Tenfo…

Re: Tenfoot, it's apparently a term used to describe TV-sized GUI's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-foot_user_interface Imagine a responsive web design that goes from 10-foot all the way down to mobile; now that would be impressive!

That would be easy the hard part is solving the responsive image problem. How can we know what quality image to send to a device?

The problems are shifting from display/device types to network types. Great you've got a 1080p phone but we can't shove down our retina quality images on 3g. Nor would you want use to use your battery life for that.

Re: Steam releases Big Picture mode

#65

Post by Already__Taken »

mdonahoe wrote: post #55

Anyone have an good suggestions for a controller? I'll probably just get an Xbox one.

Having the 360 controller compatibility is part of any games for windows live certification, plus most games have xbox support anyway it's as close to a de-facto standard controller you can get.

I'm not saying that has anything to do with steam but if I were a game dev and could only be bothered to support 1 controller that's the one I would spend the time supporting.

Re: Steam releases Big Picture mode

#66

Post by rpm4321 »

mtgx wrote: post #28
w1ntermute wrote: post #11

There's an excellent post on The Verge forums called "Forget the PS4 and the Xbox 720, build your own Steambox on the cheap"[0]. It will be very exciting to see if a significant number of gamers (many of whom are already familiar with building their own PCs) take the initiative to go down this road. A nice auxiliary advantage of building a Steambox is that you can use it as a full-featured HTPC as well, since it runs…

Anything that tries to disrupt, or at least compete on the same level with the Xbox and Playstation, is a good thing, and that includes OUYA as well.

Would it be legal for someone to manufacture and sell 3rd party Steamboxes, if Valve has no immediate plans to do so?

It seems like somebody like Alienware, or even just somebody on Kickstarter, could put together something impressive at a XBox720/PS4 pricepoint.

Re: Steam releases Big Picture mode

#67

Post by bitdiffusion »

pliu wrote: post #33
10098 wrote: post #10

Make a console, Valve!

This is their console.

This is just a re-imagining of the Steam interface to be optimised for large screens - I think the post above yours is referring to the rumoured "Steambox" that Valve themselves are supposedly working on.

Re: Steam releases Big Picture mode

#68

Post by cadab »

sliverstorm wrote: post #52
kmfrk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, Medium: http://medium.com . Otherwise, Tumblr or a gist powered by http://gist.io .

Well guys, here's a first pass: http://gist.io/4199804 Is this something I should be submitting to HN directly? Also, let me know if there's any particular pieces of information you want expanded/shared. I haven't yet had an opportunity for photos or video of use this evening.

Great write up :)

Re: Steam releases Big Picture mode

#69

Post by Nursie »

rpm4321 wrote: post #66
mtgx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that tries to disrupt, or at least compete on the same level with the Xbox and Playstation, is a good thing, and that includes OUYA as well.

Would it be legal for someone to manufacture and sell 3rd party Steamboxes, if Valve has no immediate plans to do so? It seems like somebody like Alienware, or even just somebody on Kickstarter, could put together something impressive at a XBox720/PS4 pricepoint.

You might want to talk to valve before using the word "Steam" in the name of your product...

Otherwise I can't see an impediment. Maybe Valve could even have a 'designed for Steam' certification program or something.

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