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

Steam Machines and Steam Controller shipping to beta participants December 13th

steamcommunity.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 59 posts

Re: Steam Machines and Steam Controller shipping to beta participants December 13th

#41

Post by ekianjo »

Anonymous823 wrote: post #40
ekianjo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I'm wrong :) If they were really in the game of competing with consoles, they would have had a very different strategy and not adopted a "anyone can make our box" kind of mode of operation. They are following the PC model, which means that they are not targeting mainstream consumers. Consumers who want to buy Steam Machines will have to be knowledgeable on what to buy, they will have to look at specs an…

I agree, it's a long term play, and their chance of winning over hardcore console users is zero at this time. However, they will be directly competing with consoles for space under the television. As for solving your problem with hardware confusion, they could have manufacturers ship Steam Machines with some kind of rating system. Remember how Windows had those performance ratings for memory, processor, etc? They cou…

I also think, like you, that OcculusRift will be the big game changer that may spell the doom for the consoles (because are far from being powerful enough for these kind of things).

As for the ratings system, sure, it's possible but it does not mean it's not confusing for consumers, and it adds another barrier to adoption - that's basically NOT mainstream. And you mentioned Windows performance ratings as a reference, but that's a failed example since nobody ever used these numbers anywhere.

If they go for categories/benchmarking, then they will need to have a kind of authority in place to attribute such numbers, and Valve's message so far is very against centralization. So I don't expect them to lead such efforts. If they ever did, I believe they would make it simple: SteamBox Level A to play these games only and do streaming, SteamBox Level B to play all GPU intensive games... etc...

EDIT; I don't think Dell will get rich, and neither most of the hardware manufacturers involved for that matter. SteamOS is no more no less than an Android OS-like for the PC, and that will push prices down for manufacturers which will fight hard to make small margins on large volumes. It will only be profitable for very few players.

Re: Steam Machines and Steam Controller shipping to beta participants December 13th

#42

Post by simoncion »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #38
simoncion wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> steam for still sucks in the way requires full control of my box to games. What? I run Steam as a non-Administrator user on Windows, and a non-root user on Linux. Would you elaborate on your objections?

The DirectX installer (and other dependencies) that most games want to run the first time they load requires admin access. A few games want to run the installer every time the game runs if the user isn't running as an admin. You can skip dependency installation sometimes, but other times games will crash until you take care of it.

I was really hoping to hear from the OP, but I'll address this tangent.

These installers would be an issue whether or not one was running Steam. If you were installing from a disc (heh) rather than using Steam, all that installation stuff would have happened while you were running the installer on the disc (with Admin privs).

So yes, installers that potentially install stuff under %PROGRAMFILES% and %SYSTEMROOT% will require admin privs. Unless you change permissions on the associated directories and registry trees, there's no way around that.

AFAICT, Steam itself (and, indeed, many games sold through Steam) does not require admin privs. Maybe I'm wrong about this. That's why I asked the OP for clarification.

Re: Steam Machines and Steam Controller shipping to beta participants December 13th

#43

Post by DoggettCK »

NamTaf wrote: post #33
DoggettCK wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the eligibility page, I'm seeing: "You are now one out of 421,843 eligible beta candidates." It's been at that number since the registration ended, and I'm almost certain it's worldwide, since they didn't say U.S.-only until today. I like my odds.

That was the number it showed when it ended and that is the number of worldwide participants. Your odds will now be significantly higher at the expense of my odds plummeting to zero :(

If it makes you feel better, I didn't get one, either.

The random number generator must have been racist against me specifically. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Re: Steam Machines and Steam Controller shipping to beta participants December 13th

#44

Post by kenrikm »

ekianjo wrote: post #41
Anonymous823 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, it's a long term play, and their chance of winning over hardcore console users is zero at this time. However, they will be directly competing with consoles for space under the television. As for solving your problem with hardware confusion, they could have manufacturers ship Steam Machines with some kind of rating system. Remember how Windows had those performance ratings for memory, processor, etc? They cou…

I also think, like you, that OcculusRift will be the big game changer that may spell the doom for the consoles (because are far from being powerful enough for these kind of things). As for the ratings system, sure, it's possible but it does not mean it's not confusing for consumers, and it adds another barrier to adoption - that's basically NOT mainstream. And you mentioned Windows performance ratings as a reference,…

The current consoles are plenty powerful for this type of thing, don't forget they are basically just gaming PCs in compact cases this generation and share almost the exact same hardware (Xbox One and PS4).

Re: Steam Machines and Steam Controller shipping to beta participants December 13th

#45

Post by ekianjo »

kenrikm wrote: post #44
ekianjo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think, like you, that OcculusRift will be the big game changer that may spell the doom for the consoles (because are far from being powerful enough for these kind of things). As for the ratings system, sure, it's possible but it does not mean it's not confusing for consumers, and it adds another barrier to adoption - that's basically NOT mainstream. And you mentioned Windows performance ratings as a reference,…

The current consoles are plenty powerful for this type of thing, don't forget they are basically just gaming PCs in compact cases this generation and share almost the exact same hardware (Xbox One and PS4).

Really ? Even the Occulus Rift co-founder mentioned they are far away from where they need to be.

WHen you want to do virtual reality, you need constant 60 fps (or more, ideally) in order to give a good impression of movement in all directions. XBone and PS4 are already struggling to display a SINGLE 1080p screen at 60 fps already, let's not dream too much. They are massively underpowered, and the AMD APU is notorious for being mid-range in terms of performance at best in 2013. Give it one more year and even the cheapest gaming PCs will be more powerful than them.

Re: Steam Machines and Steam Controller shipping to beta participants December 13th

#46

Post by mercurial »

elipsey wrote: post #32
javanix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drivers are usually kernel-tied more than anything else. I wouldn't expect too much improvement from the FOSS drivers like Nouveau (I suspect the performance required of modern games is still out of their reach), but the binary X drivers from should see some big improvements - any distributions that currently can leverage those would benefit.

In particular, I'm hopeful that the radeon and intel FOSS drivers will improve (although I guess that nvidia said they will help with nouveau now: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/nvidia... ). I gather Valve has given significant feedback to all three vendors ( http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049369/amd-nvidia-ramp-up-li... and: http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/08/31/1551230/valve-finds... ), a…

AFAIK Intel is pushing Wayland. As for Mir, I'm not aware of any group outside of Canonical with the slightest amount of interest.

Re: Steam Machines and Steam Controller shipping to beta participants December 13th

#49

Post by troglodie »

Anonymous823 wrote: post #37
ekianjo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not inin the game to compete with consoles. Their strategy is for the long run, to be free of winfows influence should windows one day become a closed system. obviously they dont have any of the marketing muscle needed to go mainstream and thats not their market anyway.

They better be in the game to compete with consoles, because they're going to be, whether they want to or not. If their long term plan is to simply run Big Picture Mode, and that's it, they'll fail, and never be more than a niche device used by a few PC gamers. The average person would much rather buy an Xbox or Playstation since they can use them for watching movies, Netflix, etc. Why buy a Steam Machine, if I need…

They are competing for the functionality of what used to be on the desktop gamer's desk.

The kinds of people who still buy desktop computers will be those who need them to do their work, play games, or do things 99.9% of people don't care about.

Executed properly, this will capture the the market that is willing to pay hundreds of extra dollars for top of the line 'extreme' consumer hardware so they can play games offered on Steam.

Re: Steam Machines and Steam Controller shipping to beta participants December 13th

#50

Post by namlem »

ics wrote: post #35

Maybe by the time we get SteamOS they'll finally let customers change their account names. Without losing access to their games. Pretty please?

You can change the name that other users see on Steam. It's been that way for years. Unless you mean something else?
Post reply on HN