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SteamMachines

store.steampowered.com

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191–200 of 291 posts

Re: SteamMachines

#191

Post by M2Ys4U »

msie wrote: post #175

I wish they would follow Apple's lead and tightly control the hardware. It would make it easier for devs to test and consumers to make a choice. Apple's wildly successful with their iPhone business model. Please try to avoid the fragmentation issues with Android. Windows already owns the home PC market, why go after it?

> It would make it easier for devs to test and consumers to make a choice.

A choice of one is no choice at all

>Apple's wildly successful with their iPhone business model.

Have you seen the mobile market share? Android is king.

Re: SteamMachines

#192

Post by AimHere »

touristtam wrote: post #31
TullamoreDude wrote: post #4

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

Heh, there's still time, you never know! Perhaps Friday's announcement is a cold HL3 product launch.

Re: SteamMachines

#193

Post by awj »

spyder wrote: post #79
swalsh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've positioned themselves so that none of their IP even matters as far as their core business goes. What does matter is that they own the marketplace for games. Giving the source code away only allows people to improve the platform, which only strengthens their hold on the market place.

Not if somebody modifying it to use with his own marketplace, which is unlikely but possible with the open source software.

> Not if somebody modifying it to use with his own marketplace, which is unlikely but possible with the open source software.

People have been doing that on PCs for ages. So far Valve seems to be doing well with "well, then, we'll just outcompete" as a solution to that issue.

Re: SteamMachines

#195

Post by Negitivefrags »

mheathr wrote: post #172
gabemart wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buying a good controller for a PC is not hard Is this actually true? I've been looking for a decent PC gamepad for a long time. The default recommendation seems to be the Xbox 360 controller, but with the caveat that the d-pad sucks. I play a lot of games that use the d-pad. What's a good PC gamepad with a good d-pad?

Well, provided that you find the 360 controller's d-pad acceptable, the wired xbox 360 controller works directly, however the wireless 360 controller does not work directly, a different wireless controller that specifies working with the PC has to be purchased and uses a specialized receiver as well. However, once that is accomplished it works well. I do find it obnoxious that it both requires an external USB receive…

That isn't true.

The wireless controllers for the 360 work just fine with the PC. I personally swap mine between them all the time.

Re: SteamMachines

#196

Post by lelandbatey »

InTheSwiss wrote: post #162
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #120

As a parent, if these things don't come with time-based parental controls, that would reduce their appeal A LOT. Windows, for all its warts, is great this way. The Windows-based PC in the living room, running Steam, has time-based parental controls configured at the OS level. This works great for everyone involved, reduces effort and contention. Also, kids do really well on fixed timetables. I've opened a discussion…

Seriously? When I was a kind my NES and SNES didn't need built in time controls and I am just fine. I am a parent (11 year old girl and 7 month old son) and I restrict her (son is a little too young!) time playing games in the same way my parents did by making sure I do my chores and homework first. I don't rely on OS level parental controls and I find it kind of sad people need to. I spend a lot of time playing Anim…

I'm ambivalent on the topic. Sure you can instill the values of proper time management into your kid and hope they abide by them when you're not around. However, I don't feel it's unreasonable to have an automated solution for this kind of thing.

Just like I'd love to have automated lighting in my home, or automated curtains, or a computer that will automatically turn on at certain times, sometimes it's also nice to have a things that automatically turn off after a while as well.

Re: SteamMachines

#197

Post by chc »

Brakenshire wrote: post #188
chc wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems pretty small to me, both in terms of progress and in terms of the actual size of of the release.

It means they are fully committed to the programme. Up to now there was speculation that they were going to abandon it.

No, it emphatically does not mean that. In fact, this announcement makes it sound even more like they are going to abandon it. As far as I can gather from this announcement, they're releasing a very small number of units for beta testing, and then they're getting out of the hardware game and letting third parties carry the torch.

Re: SteamMachines

#198

Post by commandar »

cheald wrote: post #136
Steko wrote: post #124

2014 Oculus Rift expected to ship widely demoed and lauded next generation experience. Nov 2013 Sony and MS start shipping new consoles. Oct 2013 Apple likely to announce and immediately ship $129=$199 A7X based console killer. Sep 2013 Valve announces beta opt in for SteamMachine with zero details on product.

> Oct 2013 Apple likely to announce $149 A7X based console killer. Maybe I'm just missing something here, but I'm pretty sure an ARM-based system has exactly zero chance of displacing current gaming platforms. They could whip up a sexy Ouya competitor, sure, but Ouya isn't exactly setting the gaming world on fire. An ARM console would be a competitor to phone/tablet gaming, not to console gaming.

Sony might have a chance of it with the Vita TV, but that has as much to do with PS4 streaming as its native games.

Re: SteamMachines

#199

Post by kuwahara »

vastinfest wrote: post #171
Arjuna wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that you will find this interesting... https://www.google.com/patents/US8241126 Video game controller having user swappable control components Original Assignee: Valve Corporation Abstract: A game controller is provided. One or more main control input interfaces on the game controller consist of generalized sockets. A variety of modular input interfaces can be plugged into these sockets. Hardware specific t…

A bit of a crappy pattent. Already been done: http://www.madcatz.com/mlg/ps3_controller.htm

That's not really the same.

Re: SteamMachines

#200

Post by Touche »

AimHere wrote: post #88
Touche wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What userland is there? It runs startx and launches Steam Big Picture, right?

And right there you're going to need a sizeable chunk of X windows, and a C library, and network configuration utilities, hardware management tools (looks like this is aimed at commodity hardware + reference machines from Valve) and the guts of a web browser and Steam itself. I wouldn't be totally surprised to find coreutils or at least busybox in the default install too, for aiding and abetting system initialising (…

Sure, not contending there is userland, just wondering if there is any interesting userland that Valve develops. They won't be open sourcing steam, so the fact that they release their build of X windows that is exactly the same as upstream isn't very interesting.
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