Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SteamMachines

store.steampowered.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 291 posts

Re: SteamMachines

#221

Post by shurcooL »

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.

Yeah, the Logitech F710 controller basically pretends to be an Xbox 360 controller, so it's very compatible.

Re: SteamMachines

#222

Post by eropple »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #96
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…

>You can use your XBox360, PS3 controller, or WiiMote, but that's not obvious. Just a thought: In a few weeks every Xbox360 and PS3 will become obsolete. So, what are the chances of me installing SteamOS on there? I'd love to turn my PS3 into a SteamOS box.

Even were it possible, the zeroes of games supporting Xenon or the PPE would be, uh, a problem.

Re: SteamMachines

#223

Post by this_user »

snotrockets wrote: post #89

Look at the beta eligibility list: they require the would be participants to get a leg in the steam community facilities, and try playing in living room mode. That would give a huge crowd an incentive to try Steam the way Valve is hoping it'd be used in the future. So they give 300 boxes, but get thousands of people trying their console-like services. Evil geniuses, those Valvers are.

It's not only that, but look at all the steps they have taken in the last 12 months:

1) Convince Nvidia and AMD to improve their Linux graphic drivers - probably by promising them additional revenue from Steambox sales - to lay the groundwork 2) Port Steam to Linux, start porting their own games 3) Build a Steam-based Linux distribution and make it available to everyone 4) Find partners that build custom hardware to run SteamOS

IMO Valve is trying to achieve two goals with this. The first goal seems to be to hedge their bets OS-wise. Gabe Newell was quite explicit in his criticism of the road MS has taken with Windows 8. Valve may very well view this as an existential threat to their business model if MS for instance takes the Apple route of promoting app store downloads over the old way of installing software. Thus, it makes sense to work towards an alternative platform that is not entirely controlled by one company. The second goal would be to introduce a new competitor in the console market by leveraging the existing Steam ecosystem and game catalogue. The beauty of this strategy is that each step adds value on its own even if the ultimate goal of establishing Steamboxes should fail

Re: SteamMachines

#224

Post by moocowduckquack »

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…

time-based parental controls

It will be small, put it away in a cupboard when it isn't being used like any other toy.

Re: SteamMachines

#225

Post by qu4z-2 »

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 [...] consumers to make a choice.

Because no choice is as easy as no choice?

Re: SteamMachines

#226

Post by moocowduckquack »

Brakenshire wrote: post #183
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…

This is Linux, though. Even if a timer isn't built in, it will be trivial to install. You could probably use something already in the apt-get repositories.

shutdown -h 20:00

Re: SteamMachines

#227

Post by petitmiam »

sturadnidge wrote: post #100
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…

Be interesting to see how they tackle the player-with-controller vs player-with-mouse/keyboard issue... clear advantage in FPS games with a mouse. I'd buy a console tomorrow if they allowed mouse/keyboard - sick of all the cheaters in PC gaming, and having games get _better_ as the hardware ages would be a welcome change from having to constantly upgrade my video card to play new releases at a decent frame rate!

Valve have at least been thinking about that problem for awhile. Back in 2011 they were planning for CS:GO to have cross-platform play between Xbox, PS3 and PC. However, the idea got ditched in 2012.

Re: SteamMachines

#228

Post by shadowmint »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #210
InTheSwiss wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 didn't think this would require pointing out, but amazingly it does. So, without further ado: Each person / family is different. We could probably sit down and have a conversation and find out some topic where some random solution works amazingly well for me, but - surprise! - it does not seem to be working so well for you. At which point, it would be my turn to observe how you could just man up and do it; after al…

Then pethaps the parent post could have read 'A LOT... to me' because it sure sounded to me like it was generalizing.

I also view parental controls as contrived and harmful, and dont use them personally, but I'm certainly not going to critise someone else for doing so.

However, I honestly doubt that parental controls will have any significant impact, generally, on the viability of the steam boxes.

Re: SteamMachines

#229

Post by Negitivefrags »

mheathr wrote: post #216
Negitivefrags wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you talking about the ones advertises for PC or the ones not sold for PC? When I bought mine (circa 2010) I had to purchase one advertises for PC as the one I had for the 360 before would not work with it otherwise. It seemed nonsensical to me that such was the case.

I'm talking about this product here: http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/xbox-360-wireless-...

Though mine was in white.

From the page. "Xbox 360 Controller for Windows works with most Windows XP-based PCs and Xbox 360, delivering a consistent and universal gaming experience."

It comes with a wireless dongle thing you plug in to your PC. Both the controllers that come with your 360 and this controller can be swapped between your PC and your 360 on demand by pushing the resync button on the controller and on the device simultaneously.

I've never heard of a 360 controller that didn't work both with the PC dongle and the 360 itself.

Re: SteamMachines

#230

Post by shadowmint »

I'm a tiny bit concerned.

    Can I download the OS to try it out?
    You will be able to download it (including the source code, if you're into that) but not yet.
Open source os. Hardware partners for devices. Sound familiar? >_> android.

So, when I buy a samsung steambox it's going to come with its own BallsWiz UI customization as they try to differentiate isnt it?

Post reply on HN