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SteamMachines

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Re: SteamMachines

#261

Post by tsahyt »

bastards wrote: post #249

I am not trying to be a downer, but I think this is going to be a huge flop. Gaming appliances need to be focused at the gaming market, which Sony and MS own like the U.S. and USSR in the mid to late 20th century. Nintendo messed up with the Wii U and probably won't recover, and everything else is secondary, for now. I even think Apple's move into the TV gaming market will be mostly a bust, but I could be wrong, beca…

I haven't bought a Steam game either. In fact, I don't even have an account. For the past couple of years I've been locked into the MS ecosystem with the Xbox 360. I will not buy the Xbox One though. I don't need a surveillance machine in my living room. I was never a fan of the PlayStation. For a while it looked like I had to build a PC and have it run the system I dislike the most, just for the sake of gaming.

Seriously, I'd buy (or build) a SteamMachine in a heartbeat. It's the most sensible option for me at this time.

Re: SteamMachines

#262

Post by tsahyt »

stonemetal wrote: post #47
fooqux wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

but I think that would piss all kinds of people off due to it obviously being a marketing ploy. You mean like HL2 and the original steam release?

Or the original Halo on the first Xbox. If I remember correctly that game alone promoted the console for a lot of customers. Valve could give HL3 a head start of a couple of months on SteamOS and release it on other platforms after that. It would be less annoying that being fully exclusive. Besides, all the PC gamers could just go and dual boot SteamOS on they PC. It's free after all.

Re: SteamMachines

#263

Post by lmm »

CrazedGeek wrote: post #64
14113 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And I've never been able to play Super Mario Bros. with a keyboard. It goes both ways.

Really? I first played it on the console but have no trouble using a keyboard.

Re: SteamMachines

#264

Post by z999 »

rodgerd wrote: post #170
breckinloggins wrote: post #22

I'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…

Or you: Buy Logitech F710 wireless controller. Plug Logitech controller in. Notice modern Windows games auto-detect Logitech controller as XBox controller. Play games. It's not rocket science. And frankly, most PC gamers are pretty familiar with jumping through far more hoops than that.

It costs the same as the wireless X360 controller for windows, does it have any advantage over it?

Re: SteamMachines

#265

Post by acd »

This means we can finally ditch Windows for Linux. It also means it will be really important for video graphics cards makers to have fast Linux drivers.

Re: SteamMachines

#266

Post by z999 »

chadwickthebold wrote: post #135
jpadkins wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

moore's law? Or more specifically, look at charts of cpu/$, gpu/$ memory/$ and flash/$ over time. They all go down over time.

I'm pretty sure there's the same distinction today, where a ~$500 console is more graphically powerful than a ~$500 general-purpose computer. I don't think that you're going to see that price point move very much 'in a few years'. The better case for the SteamMachine is in whatever streaming capabilities it will have. I venture to say that most people who care about bleeding-edge graphics probably have their own cust…

Have you been around the tech world in the last at few years?

Current gen consoles came out in '05-'06, by 2008 a strong having pc could easily be built to surpass them in abilities (strong gaming PC - ~1000$). By 2010 that goal was achievable on a more sane budget (let's say 600$).

Now you want to say: "hey z999! You said 300$ in a few years!, this is 600$ in five years!". Yes, but the next gen console are much less powerful compared to the market than what the current gen console were compared to the market in 2005. Remember how the PS3 cost 600$ and the Xbox was 500$ (I'm not certain on the Xbox price, it could have been 400$)? Well, next green consul mess know that there is no reason to lose money on hardware because that doesn't win the race, meaning they are probably equivalent to a 1000$ PC TODAY, so following the past trends we will easily see HSA arcade of equivalent power in the 300$-400$ bracket.

Re: SteamMachines

#267

Post by Sarkie »

cheald wrote: post #32
breckinloggins wrote: post #22

I'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.

I did the same, the thing took a while renaming inf files and such to get working on Windows.

Linux, plug and play. Lovely.

Re: SteamMachines

#268

Post by sondh »

vignesh_vs_in wrote: post #54
simias wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

XBox wired controller works well with mac as well thanks to the open source driver ( http://tattiebogle.net/index.php/ProjectRoot/Xbox360Controll... ). I have never faced any issue using the controller to play steam games on my mac.

I have kernel panic with this driver unfortunately. Wired XBox 360 with iMac 2011 and MacBook Pro 2012. Not sure what caused the issue... Because of it, I installed Windows via BootCamp and play all games over there, a bit inconvenient.

Re: SteamMachines

#269

Post by anonymous »

Arjuna wrote: post #60
breckinloggins wrote: post #22

I'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 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…

Why not just buy two-three gamepads with different layouts? Surely that would be cheaper and easier!

Re: SteamMachines

#270

Post by mseebach »

anonymous wrote: post #269
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…

Why not just buy two-three gamepads with different layouts? Surely that would be cheaper and easier!

You're right. That's what leads me to guess that they have significantly more than 2-3 layouts in mind.

Imagine selecting your weapons physically as well as in-game before going on a raid with some gamepad-plugins offering better control over in-game weapons or accessories than others.

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