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SteamOS

store.steampowered.com

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Re: SteamOS

#391

Post by ekianjo »

daviding wrote: post #380
skriticos2 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the iconography on the main page I'd guess the second announcement will be Steam hardware and the third one will be Half Life 3 (second circle indicates software product again?). Pure speculation on my side here. http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/

As this is as good a place as any to record my guess, I'd go for some sort of virtualization. O = SteamOS [O] = Hardware partners Steam box (in tiers inc. an inexpensive stream target box for $99) [O O] = Being able to run a SteamOS game on your Windows system. Think DOSBox or HyperV. If they could do this then really it's a case of convenience vs performance, and a few exclusives or two would push people to dual boo…

A 99 dollars havfdware? That would stink bad in terms of performance.

Re: SteamOS

#392

Post by daviding »

ekianjo wrote: post #391
daviding wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As this is as good a place as any to record my guess, I'd go for some sort of virtualization. O = SteamOS [O] = Hardware partners Steam box (in tiers inc. an inexpensive stream target box for $99) [O O] = Being able to run a SteamOS game on your Windows system. Think DOSBox or HyperV. If they could do this then really it's a case of convenience vs performance, and a few exclusives or two would push people to dual boo…

A 99 dollars havfdware? That would stink bad in terms of performance.

I was just thinking a dedicated OnLive / ChromeCast like wee box for the LAN, perhaps with a Valve designed controller (i.e. an analog something). All real processing would be on the host SteamOS PC really, with dedicated hardware to help reduce lag on the stream.

Re: SteamOS

#393

Post by jebblue »

Is it just me or does Valve still rock? These guys really keep powering along, steady pace, good going guys, best wishes with your new platform!

Re: SteamOS

#394

Post by vacri »

bsimpson wrote: post #132
makmanalp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing is that convincing AAA publishers to port merely requires them to think it'd be profitable. 20 years ago, if someone asked to raise a quarter of a billion into a video game, they'd be laughed out of the building. Now it happens often. Over the years, increasingly big-budget games got funded and created. So, all they need to do is to replicate a similar process. First you move all the indie games…

I believe Humble Bundle has a partnership with a consultancy that will take care of porting a game to other platforms to enable their Mac/Linux/Windows value proposition. Valve could probably do something similar (though I imagine it's a lot more work to port a AAA game than an indie platformer).

I can't speak for recent Humble Bundles, but the linux experience of earlier ones was inconsistent to say the least. Some games were as if they were intended to be native. Others just didn't work or actually didn't exist. Others worked, but were buggy... and never got the update fixes. Maybe they have become better?

Re: SteamOS

#395

Post by evanmoran »

As someone mentioned this is just the first announcement of three: http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/

Announcement 1, SteamOS: is just a fancy way to say you can create custom Steam consoles by just installing some software. Make the box as good or a cheap as you want and everything will just workPretty awesome, but definitely this will be dwarfed by...

Announcement 2, people are guessing is a Valve distributed "SteamBox": a console that is presumably very cheap and linux based. This would give Xbox One and PS4 a run for their money and with the social aspects of Steam built-in, this could be a break out hit with a price of 50% all the other consoles.

Announcement 3, is the large unknown here. We don't know what it is, but if it is bigger (or equal to) SteamBox this could be a huge deal. Nothing really makes sense here. We know:

* SteamBox will support streaming from your windows/mac machine so it will be able to run every game at launch.

* SteamBox will likely have lots of publishers signed on. Probably as many or more then on xbox one / ps4. If they are already using an engine that targets multiple platforms (Unreal or Unity) they are definitely going to try to support it.

* SteamBox will likely support all the features of steam with friend lists, chat, voice, purchasing over the cloud, etc. So the + might mean sharing, but a new kind?

* SteamBox supports game sharing at a friends or family level. I see this as a kind of Netflix-like persona idea: an account gains separate personas that each have different friends lists and achievements. Very powerful and necessary once Steam hits the living room and multiple people are using the same box / account.

What it could be:

* LAN play for SteamBoxs on the same network (announced in Dota, this could explain the circle + circle graphic). Maybe you share the game between friends, and stream to the other boxes? That would be pretty awesome.

* Game streaming from other people's SteamBoxs? This would be an awesome way to share a game. It is like onlive but for distributed for everyone (seems unlikely. That kind of streaming would stop your friends from being able to play).

* A launch title like Half-life 3 (seems unlikely with the circle + circle logo implying you need multiple SteamOS instances).

* A new kind of social experience, maybe a built in way to be a part of the game creation process or improved social network experiences on Steam (seems unlikely to be big enough to be the final announcement)

* A new kind of hardware like a VR headset(seems unlikely, as cheap will be a big feature of this box)

This is marketing at its best. They hooked us good.

Re: SteamOS

#396

Post by wonderzombie »

davidhollander wrote: post #361
wonderzombie wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is likely to be coupled with some manner of hardware launch, as well. I am skeptical that the name "Linux" will be a particularly useful term in that context. Couple that with my skepticism that they're actually shipping much if any traditional Linux userspace software, and it's even less useful to compare potential SteamOS users to traditional Linux users. Other than that I agree that with Valve as a patron the…

What are your definitions for "traditional Linux userspace software" and "traditional Linux users"? Do you consider Android to be "Linux"?

"Traditional Linux userspace software" is an informal definition, but let's say something like X. Or your average window manager. Or, say, almost anything from GNOME.

"Traditional Linux users" is another informal definition, but if you use a distro, you're probably a traditional Linux user. Contrast this with an Android user. They run the Linux kernel but the software they interface with is an entirely different breed. The statement "Android is Linux" is true, definitely, but it's inside baseball to anyone but us nerds. The Linux-y aspects are more or less invisible (by design).

I'm not trying to slight either desktop Linux or Android or SteamOS or whatever, just to be clear. I think it's a huge win for Linux, at least in some sense.

I think it's misleading to read "Linux" and imagine "desktop GNU/Linux with all the trimmings." I can't imagine there won't be some way to get that on a SteamOS machine. My skepticism is directed at the idea that Valve will ship anything which, out of the box, resembles a traditional desktop Linux experience. I expect it will be more like an Android experience than Ubuntu, with rather limited access to OS internals, filesystem, package management, etc.

Does that make more sense?

Re: SteamOS

#397

Post by bcent »

davidhollander wrote: post #361
wonderzombie wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is likely to be coupled with some manner of hardware launch, as well. I am skeptical that the name "Linux" will be a particularly useful term in that context. Couple that with my skepticism that they're actually shipping much if any traditional Linux userspace software, and it's even less useful to compare potential SteamOS users to traditional Linux users. Other than that I agree that with Valve as a patron the…

What are your definitions for "traditional Linux userspace software" and "traditional Linux users"? Do you consider Android to be "Linux"?

My guess would be anything that runs X.org + Gnome/KDE/XFCE ... (and the list goes on)

My guess is that SteamOS is a rather specialized flavor of linux ... akin to Android.

... Just my 2 cents.

Re: SteamOS

#398

Post by criley2 »

McGlockenshire wrote: post #374
criley2 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember: The PS4 and Xbox1 both are literally built on top of DirectX11, meaning that games for next-gen consoles (read: AAA) will be DirectX by DEFAULT but will certainly not be OpenGL by default. And OpenGL is a requirement for Linux support of these games. How Valve is strong arming manufacturers into writing the graphics code for their games in BOTH frameworks is beyond me. I'm not sure the major engines out the…

> The PS4 and Xbox1 both are literally built on top of DirectX11 I'd love to know where Sony said that the PS4 uses DirectX.

"Sony is building its CPU on what it's calling an extended DirectX 11.1+ feature set, including extra debugging support that is not available on PC platforms. This system will also give developers more direct access to the shader pipeline than they had on the PS3 or through DirectX itself. "This is access you're not used to getting on the PC, and as a result you can do a lot more cool things and have a lot more access to the power of the system," Norden said. A low-level API will also let coders talk directly with the hardware in a way that's "much lower-level than DirectX and OpenGL," but still not quite at the driver level." http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/sony-dives-deep-into-t...

Is what I was going on, but I can see that "DirectX feature set" is not the same as "DirectX", so I apologize for misleading.

Re: SteamOS

#399

Post by Aqueous »

rkalla wrote: post #26

This is effectively the software-only equivalent of a console launch. Is anyone else skeptical that they can motivate publishers to spend time/money porting their games to the Linux platform? Valve certainly has a better chance than most at pulling this off (and likely enough user/market data to make this seem like a valid investment) I am still super skeptical that these publishers are going to spend the time portin…

There is no "Linux Platform", unfortunately.

I think that's what Steam is doing here. Creating a platform that doesn't exist yet, to bridge PC and console gaming.

Re: SteamOS

#400

Post by bfigares »

This is easily the most groundbreaking news I've heard as a gamer (and from the point of view of an engineer/business geek) in the past four years or so. This will be a really tough blow for the windows platform since the gamer demographic drives a lot of spending. Also it points to a very deep strategic move by valve, vertically integrating the distribution channel and controlling a la Apple which and how games are experienced. I wouldn't be surprised if valve built strong partnerships with hardware providers to provide a fully vertically integrated, key-in-hand gaming platform experience. It is worth mentioning that valve also sells other types of programs through steam... and that it seems this will eventually mutate into it's application store, centralizing the money management for steamOS in general and fully capturing the platform value.

A new apple but instead of "think different", the idea will be "play different"

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