Now they need a pusher, to get SteamMachines and SteamOs on the market. Half Life 3 confirmed?
http://store.stearnpowered.com/app/246720/
just in case: kk it is still funny :p
SteamMachines
31–40 of 291 posts
Re: SteamMachines
#32I'm excited about where Valve is going with this, of course, but to be honest I'm concerned about controllers the most. Buying a good controller for a PC is not hard, but it's not simple either. Picture yourself as a "living room console guy" getting into PC gaming. You'd like to use a controller for a certain game. Consider: - You can use your XBox360, PS3 controller, or WiiMote, but that's not obvious. You'll need…
I use my Xbox 360 controllers with a no-name wireless receiver. It took some work to get the drivers working properly, but it's fantastic now. If Valve can provide a similar experience, except all plug-and-play, that'll be killer.
I totally agree that it's non-obvious to most of the gaming market, though.
Re: SteamMachines
#33That doesn't seem like a large enough beta and it really only targets PC gamers. I would think that they would want to be trying to capture console gamer share rather than existing PC gamers.
Why wouldn't they beta with existing Steam users who use their Steam accounts in the living room?
Re: SteamMachines
#34I'm excited about where Valve is going with this, of course, but to be honest I'm concerned about controllers the most. Buying a good controller for a PC is not hard, but it's not simple either. Picture yourself as a "living room console guy" getting into PC gaming. You'd like to use a controller for a certain game. Consider: - You can use your XBox360, PS3 controller, or WiiMote, but that's not obvious. You'll need…
I can echo your concerns because I ran into it with Spelunky recently - they seem to only support Xbox360 controllers as their "controller" settings. I solved it by using Joy2Key to map keys to my controller (a very solid Logitech one!) and had no problems.
However, most people probably wouldn't want to jump through those kind of hoops (downloading a third party app + mapping the keys to the right keyboard keys) so I'd love if Steam had some sort of unified controller support, but I also feel like that's asking for a lot.
Re: SteamMachines
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since SteamOS is Linux and they're distributing it, they have to. This doesn't mean that any of the Valve applications running on top of it will be open source. I don't expect them to be.
The question is about "SteamOS" however, not the kernel. That means that the userland might be open source as well (like android). Actually it's a must if they want people to actually port their OS to a wide range of hardware. That being said Steam (the app) will obviously remain closed source.
What userland is there? It runs startx and launches Steam Big Picture, right?
Re: SteamMachines
#36> Am I going to be using a mouse and a keyboard in the living-room? > If you want. But Steam and SteamOS work well with gamepads, too. Stay tuned, though - we have some more to say very soon on the topic of input. This excites me. Valve's bread-and-butter, as a gamedev company and not a game reseller, uses a pointing device. FPS games and Dota are both genres that do far better with a mouse. Obviously, supporting gam…
Did nobody else read the Beta Terms of Agreement?
1. Valve Corporation ("Valve", "We", "Us" or "Our") has developed and produced prototypes of entertainment system hardware and software, including a set-top box running custom software and a game controller
A game controller...
Re: SteamMachines
#37> Am I going to be using a mouse and a keyboard in the living-room? > If you want. But Steam and SteamOS work well with gamepads, too. Stay tuned, though - we have some more to say very soon on the topic of input. This excites me. Valve's bread-and-butter, as a gamedev company and not a game reseller, uses a pointing device. FPS games and Dota are both genres that do far better with a mouse. Obviously, supporting gam…
>FPS games and Dota are both genres that do far better with a mouse. Toupée fallacy. I'd argue that games built for a gamepad -- Halo and Gears of War come to mind -- feel much better on a gamepad than they do on a keyboard and mouse.
I've never been able to play halo on a console, it feels far too inaccurate to me, now that I'm used to playing with a mouse.
Re: SteamMachines
#38Now they need a pusher, to get SteamMachines and SteamOs on the market. Half Life 3 confirmed?
>Half Life 3 confirmed?
If you take the time of the announcement (in seconds elapsed since midnight, March 14th 1993), divided by the amount of letters in the FAQ, and then find the square root of the resulting number, you get 3!
Seriously though, are you suggesting that HL3 will only be released (even for a short while) the SteamOS? I agree it's possible, but I think that would piss all kinds of people off due to it obviously being a marketing ploy.
I would imagine a more likely option for them are discounts for various games on the platform for a few weeks.
Re: SteamMachines
#39I'm excited about where Valve is going with this, of course, but to be honest I'm concerned about controllers the most. Buying a good controller for a PC is not hard, but it's not simple either. Picture yourself as a "living room console guy" getting into PC gaming. You'd like to use a controller for a certain game. Consider: - You can use your XBox360, PS3 controller, or WiiMote, but that's not obvious. You'll need…
That might have been true in the past (I remember having some trouble with a SideWinder controller on a dedicated control port in the 90's) but these days the 360 wired USB controllers are as plug'n'play as it gets (on windows at least). It Just Works. PS3 controllers are a pity though, you need those shady ad-ridden closed source third party drivers.
Very true, but remember that the issue I'm addressing is more about branding and marketing than about the tech. For example:
"Wait, you mean I have to buy an XBox 360 controller to use my Steam Machine?"
Well, no, but it's better that way.
"What do you mean, isn't there a Steam Controller."
Not exactly, you see any Steam Machine is compatible with any number of controllers.
"So why can't I buy this other controller I saw at Best Buy?"
You can, but I can't guarantee you it'll work very well. I only use my 360 wired controller with it.
"Oh, ok. Well maybe I'll just get an XBox, then."
That's the kind of thing the Steam Alliance (or whatever they'll call it) will have to overcome.
Re: SteamMachines
#40I'm excited about where Valve is going with this, of course, but to be honest I'm concerned about controllers the most. Buying a good controller for a PC is not hard, but it's not simple either. Picture yourself as a "living room console guy" getting into PC gaming. You'd like to use a controller for a certain game. Consider: - You can use your XBox360, PS3 controller, or WiiMote, but that's not obvious. You'll need…
I use my Xbox 360 controllers with a no-name wireless receiver. It took some work to get the drivers working properly, but it's fantastic now. If Valve can provide a similar experience, except all plug-and-play, that'll be killer. I totally agree that it's non-obvious to most of the gaming market, though.
Doesn't the next generation of controller simply work over bluetooth? I know the DS3 already does. If that's the case, it shouldn't require any specialized hardware, since almost everything comes with bluetooth these days.