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Valve Reveals First Gen Steam Machines

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Valve Reveals First Gen Steam Machines

#31

Post by dm2 »

After dealing with Steam support I have lost any enthusiasm for Valve and Steam.

I recently purchased a game from them that has been out for over a year, they ran out of CD Keys so Steam gave me the "could not connect to key server" message. After going back and forth with Steam support they refused to issue me a refund or even give me an ETA for when I would be able to play the game that I've already payed for. Horrible customer support and I doubt I'm the first customer they've done this to.

Several weeks later, no game, no refund, no cd key, and no update from their support staff (which is accessible via email only, no chat, no phone). Screw you Valve and Steam, I'll stick to my PC.

Re: Valve Reveals First Gen Steam Machines

#32

Post by scholia »

dm2 wrote: post #31

After dealing with Steam support I have lost any enthusiasm for Valve and Steam. I recently purchased a game from them that has been out for over a year, they ran out of CD Keys so Steam gave me the "could not connect to key server" message. After going back and forth with Steam support they refused to issue me a refund or even give me an ETA for when I would be able to play the game that I've already payed for. Horr…

Terrible support from a company that uses Digital Rights Management? Think I've heard this story before....

Re: Valve Reveals First Gen Steam Machines

#33

Post by scholia »

adricnet wrote: post #26
justin66 wrote: post #14

Curious what it is about this pdf that makes Chrome's pdf reader hit 100% cpu and not make it past the second page: http://media.steampowered.com/store/steammachines/SteamMachi... Works fine, readable in preview.

That is one tough PDF. It's loading in Firefox (UX) here but is balky.

The PDF is quite small and loads in a second from Scribd

http://www.scribd.com/doc/196758024/Steam-Machines-CES-broch...

Since it has taken more than 30 minutes to load just two pages in Firefox from http://media.steampowered.com then it must be a different problem....

Re: Valve Reveals First Gen Steam Machines

#34

Post by scholia »

bane wrote: post #28
captainmuon wrote: post #22

Nice to see that they gathered some of the "big" names I fondly remember from my gaming days (Alienware, Alternate, GigaByte, Zotac). It looks like they're not targeting the console demographic, but the classical "PC gamers". It has been getting harder and harder to get a good gaming PC. One reason is that since I'm grown up I can no longer read gaming magazines all day long to become a hardware expert ;-). The other…

I actually just went and built a new machine...and it wasn't too bad. To put some things in perspective, back in the mid-90s I worked at a computer hardware store, building and repairing machines day-in and day-out, but I haven't been in that kind of business since then. There was almost nothing similar to those days except the basic names of some of the parts "video card", "case" etc. I also build my last machine so…

There's a website that helps you pick and order the parts, you can get advice on builds, or use someone else's build

http://pcpartpicker.com/

Otherwise there are plenty of small companies that supply gaming PCs, as well as Asus (Republic of Gamers) and Dell (through its purchase of Alienware).

Re: Valve Reveals First Gen Steam Machines

#35

Post by scholia »

nobodyshere wrote: post #8
painisRelative wrote: post #2

Is this the end or the start of the beginning?

This is a new way of marketing gaming pc's of mid-range price group. You no longer will have to know what gtx780 is and how to build a decent machine. It will also be convenient for media playback. Some kind of a revised htpc that you don't have to worry about, but still allows you to replace almost anything inside (try doing that with a ps4 or xbox one).

Except people will still need to figure those things out to decide which of the many different Steam Boxes to buy....

Oth3erwise, the PC and gaming industry strategies are completely different. With consoles, the hardware is more or less fixed, but later developments (eg die shrinks) are used to reduce the price. With PCs, the price is maintained fairly constant over the short term but later developments are used to increase the performance or whatever is fashionable (eg maintain or reduce the performance but make it thinner).

Re: Valve Reveals First Gen Steam Machines

#36

Post by dageshi »

yaeger wrote: post #3

Okay, what I don't get, how could Valve get that many partners to offer Steam Machines? Seeing as how little games for Linux there currently are? Did Valve tell them something we don't know? Like, every major Engine Developer is about to offer an OpenGL option that would allow devs to continue to work just as they do now but the resulting binary could be created with OpenGL instead of DX? I know that you can stream y…

It's the android model. Valve make the reference hardware and OS, the PC manufacturers build the boxes. The PC manufacturers are betting that Steambox will let them tap into the console market which is both huge and currently unavailable too them.

Re: Valve Reveals First Gen Steam Machines

#37

Post by bane »

scholia wrote: post #34
bane wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually just went and built a new machine...and it wasn't too bad. To put some things in perspective, back in the mid-90s I worked at a computer hardware store, building and repairing machines day-in and day-out, but I haven't been in that kind of business since then. There was almost nothing similar to those days except the basic names of some of the parts "video card", "case" etc. I also build my last machine so…

There's a website that helps you pick and order the parts, you can get advice on builds, or use someone else's build http://pcpartpicker.com/ Otherwise there are plenty of small companies that supply gaming PCs, as well as Asus (Republic of Gamers) and Dell (through its purchase of Alienware).

Man, that would have been super useful this last go around!
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