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SteamOS

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Re: SteamOS

#61

Post by jaredmcateer »

estel wrote: post #56
jaredmcateer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The announcement page claims all 3000 titles are available via streaming, similar to the OnLive service but only for your internal network, I'm guessing. Effectively working around the porting issue.

The streaming works if you have a beefy Windows machine in your house already, it's not a solution for people wanting a dedicated "Steam" console.

Granted it's a stop gap measure until they have more developers developing directly on OpenGL rather than Dx. But most people that are excited about this do have a fairly good gaming machine in their house already.

Re: SteamOS

#62

Post by MrMember »

jaredmcateer wrote: post #44
rkalla wrote: post #26

This is effectively the software-only equivalent of a console launch. Is anyone else skeptical that they can motivate publishers to spend time/money porting their games to the Linux platform? Valve certainly has a better chance than most at pulling this off (and likely enough user/market data to make this seem like a valid investment) I am still super skeptical that these publishers are going to spend the time portin…

The announcement page claims all 3000 titles are available via streaming, similar to the OnLive service but only for your internal network, I'm guessing. Effectively working around the porting issue.

It seems to work like the nVidia Shield's streaming. Another computer on your home network handles the heavy lifting and streams the video output to your SteamOS box.

Re: SteamOS

#64

Post by corresation »

estel wrote: post #56
jaredmcateer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The announcement page claims all 3000 titles are available via streaming, similar to the OnLive service but only for your internal network, I'm guessing. Effectively working around the porting issue.

The streaming works if you have a beefy Windows machine in your house already, it's not a solution for people wanting a dedicated "Steam" console.

It is a brilliant tactic to migrate the considerable Steam base to the Steambox. It is transitional, of course, but brilliant for it.

Re: SteamOS

#65

Post by jsnell »

rkalla wrote: post #26

This is effectively the software-only equivalent of a console launch. Is anyone else skeptical that they can motivate publishers to spend time/money porting their games to the Linux platform? Valve certainly has a better chance than most at pulling this off (and likely enough user/market data to make this seem like a valid investment) I am still super skeptical that these publishers are going to spend the time portin…

Well, there is some teasing along those lines there:

> Watch for announcements in the coming weeks about all the AAA titles coming natively to SteamOS in 2014.

But more importantly, control of Steam gives Valve a lot of leverage in this. It's easy to see the reasons for Linux support in indie games. But harder to see why mid-tier developers like Paradox or Eugen started to port their latest games to Linux. It's a good bet that some kind of a Steam-related carrot was involved there.

Re: SteamOS

#66

Post by throwaway2048 »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #41
antsar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not open source, however. Not a dealbreaker, but an important distinction to keep in mind.

Personally, I'm fine with Steam remaining closed-source, as this is both inevitable because of it being both a store and a DRM provider. The key question here is whether Valve's future extensions to the graphics subsystems (which seem to be advertised, to some extent) will be released as open-source and be admitted to the (free software) kernel and libraries that exist today.

They have hired the head SDL developer and have greatly been moving the library forward, while keeping it open source, for instance.

Valve in a lot of respects is a strange company, they are relatively small and employee owned, and have a massive per employee profit margin, well into the "Fuck you money" bracket. I think their main driving incentive at this point is to make better games for its own sake. Based on the platform the chosen I think that means contributing back in a big way.

we are going to see a lot of really exciting stuff out of them

Re: SteamOS

#67

Post by DigitalJack »

jaredmcateer wrote: post #44
rkalla wrote: post #26

This is effectively the software-only equivalent of a console launch. Is anyone else skeptical that they can motivate publishers to spend time/money porting their games to the Linux platform? Valve certainly has a better chance than most at pulling this off (and likely enough user/market data to make this seem like a valid investment) I am still super skeptical that these publishers are going to spend the time portin…

The announcement page claims all 3000 titles are available via streaming, similar to the OnLive service but only for your internal network, I'm guessing. Effectively working around the porting issue.

I don't know if they are going to attempt something like onlive, but this streaming is on your local lan from your Windows or Mac box.

Re: SteamOS

#68

Post by venomsnake »

xentronium wrote: post #58
Robadob wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large part of it may be covered by this functionality; "You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have - then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV!"

It's a dual-edged sword, as being able to stream windows titles doesn't give much incentive for game devs to fully support linux, does it?

But it gives the users a reason to switch which is important. The idea of forfeiting 300-400 games is not pleasant.

Re: SteamOS

#69

Post by jayd16 »

rkalla wrote: post #26

This is effectively the software-only equivalent of a console launch. Is anyone else skeptical that they can motivate publishers to spend time/money porting their games to the Linux platform? Valve certainly has a better chance than most at pulling this off (and likely enough user/market data to make this seem like a valid investment) I am still super skeptical that these publishers are going to spend the time portin…

I suppose they could plug the hole a little including a dalvik vm and get android games running too. In theory they would be able to get a large amount of games working and kill the OUYA. I'm not sure that's in the best interest of the Steam store unless they plan to start selling android games.

Re: SteamOS

#70

Post by IsTom »

redthrowaway wrote: post #46
Glyptodon wrote: post #22

The streaming of other OS games from your other OS systems seems like a pretty compelling and surprising feature. I wonder if it will work with all games.

I can't see how they'd manage to get twitch games like online FPSes to be playable with the addition of another layer of latency between the player and the game. A 100ms delay between input and response is death for games like that.

Latency on local network is at most a few ms most of the time. If they can squeeze input/output on 100 Mbps ethernet without much delay it should be good.
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