Steambox is real

[EvilRyu2099]

I agree 100% with Ds, but at the same time I wish Steam will..

[Ivo]

I wish Valve all the best, but I currently have little interest in this and fail to see why I or anyone else would want to purchase this if I already have a PC.

Frankly I also never understood why so many people want to purchase a tablet to use on the couch instead of sitting in front of a PC to browse the web, and yet that seems to be the trend things are going.

I wouldn't be surprised if this "standardized underpowered PC in the living room" thing takes off. I mean, isn't that basically what Microsoft has been doing with the Xbox, really? Sony also really seemed to keep trying to go in that direction with the PS2 and PS3 (DVD and Blu Ray player). This is possibly just a more obvious attempt involving Valve.

In fact, everyone seems to be poised to fight for the couch / living room / TV and having "walled of gardens" of curated stores.
Google and Apple not just with their very "couchable" tablets but with stuff like Apple TV upcoming, and still on Android there is the OUYA and the new nVidia thing (which is surprising with nVidia comingh in directly). Microsoft with Win 8 and Surface.

I don't like it, but if it is what the average consumer wants can't blame the companies for catering to it. In principle we will always have our retro games somehow, though, so I'm not too worried.

Ivo.

[isiolia]

I just read this and a few other related articles. Here's what I don't get: How is this not just a branded small-form PC (with multiple licensed manufacturers) that I could probably build on my own for less money?

I think it's hard to say until they get closer to actually releasing something.

Right now, my thinking is more along a couple lines. First, that Valve may see MS as marginalizing PC gaming due to promoting the XBox platform, and feels they could do better to provide a "platform" for it, considering they kind of already do.
The fact that Valve is saying their box will ship with Linux makes me think that maybe Steam will be able to be more self-contained than it is now, and it'll be less of a Windows game or a Linux game than a Steam game. As outlandish as it might seem, it just doesn't make sense that they'd ship a purposed Steam device running an OS that only natively runs a fraction of what's on their service.


Hardware-wise, I think it's just for ease of shopping for those who either can't or don't want to roll their own. What if the answer to a "what machine to buy for gaming" could be "go buy something branded as a Steambox level 2 or 3" instead of trying to explain why what they really want to to is build their own?
Again, maybe just because nobody else is really doing it. The focus is elsewhere, with Ultrabooks and tablets.


I don't see it as much as a singular product so much as Valve deciding that nobody is putting a real focus on PC gaming, so they're going to do it themselves. As such, it may not be all "for me", but the chances that something good will come of it seems high. A lot higher than MS, Apple, or some Linux distro doing anything anyway.

[KDub]

I don't see Valve getting into the underpowered PC market, I mean Valve pretty much only works with PC I don't see them wanting to water down their own market.

I do hope that they streamline it at least for their platform. Think how much more convenient it would be if to have a game on Steam or activate on Steam it would have to be compatible with X hardware.

[dsheinem]

Think how much more convenient it would be if to have a game on Steam or activate on Steam it would have to be compatible with X hardware.

For many people, a big part of the allure of PC gaming is NOT having fixed hardware standards, fixed controller options, fixed resolutions, etc. This allows/forces devs to scale their games to a wide variety of hardware, which I tend to think is a good thing for both low-end PC gamers who want to play many games on the cheap and for hardware junkies that want to push frames and textures.

I'm just concerned that one of the two major PC Gaming-affiliated companies in the US (Blizzard being the other) is probably about to undercut much of what makes PC gaming so wonderfully distinct from console gaming in the first place. Especially given that the PC market has been thriving for the last year or two while current-gen consoles' hardware has become increasingly outdated, I see this as a step backwards.

[KDub]

Hmm yeah you're right. I see can both sides of the coin on this one I guess.

I don't know I think I'll just take the wait and see approach on this one. I'm tempted enough to consider a steam box since I need a new PC anyway.

[Erik_Twice]

This worries me greatly. Steam has been a huge presence and drive for the PC market and I can't see how a close-ended, fixed machine is going to do any good. If anything, it will exacerbate the problems with terrible ports that don't even bother having customizable keys, different output resolutions or anything else.

And this is designed to play from your couch. They want to make controllers for this. And they already dumbed down Portal 2 to accomodate for them, and next time it will be a shooter, not a puzzle game.

This is the premier PC company making a console. If it were designed as an alternative tabletop computers, I would see it with another eyes, but it does seem like this is yet another attempt to take the living room with a crappy walled garden.


I really hope it fails because it could heavily wound PC gaming.

[dsheinem]

And they already dumbed down Portal 2 to accomodate for them

A thousand times this. Glad someone else recognized this too. The difficult jumping/twitch sections in Portal 1 were basically missing from Portal 2 because there was no way in hell for most people to pull them off with any degree of reliability with a controller.

[isiolia]

I'm just concerned that one of the two major PC Gaming-affiliated companies in the US (Blizzard being the other) is probably about to undercut much of what makes PC gaming so wonderfully distinct from console gaming in the first place. Especially given that the PC market has been thriving for the last year or two while current-gen consoles' hardware has become increasingly outdated, I see this as a step backwards.

It's a possibility, but, I don't think that's the direction they're going with it.

The Gabe interview mentioned targeting multiple levels of machine, some just being for streaming content, scaling up. He mentions that their own box will easily allow for Windows to be installed instead of Linux. Even the tiny Xi3 machines linked are modular and upgradeable. In his words, in a "Good, Better, Best" setup, "Best" is "whatever those guys want to build".

Signs are not indicating that there will be one static set of specs. Beyond that, I see no reason that Valve would move away from an existing customer base. Its in their interests to have as many people as possible running their service. Their expansion to OS X and Linux would underline that.

More or less, if this is a step back, who is making a step forward, particularly on a platform level? Outside of raw computing power, the PC has been fairly stagnant. For example, what the Wii U does is easily within the capability of PC hardware. Why haven't we seen it there? Why is Kinect support so marginal, SmartGlass targeted at XBox, or whatever. A lot of what I see Gabe talking about is bringing that kind of stuff to the PC via Steam. I don't think he'd be saying that if MS (particularly) was actually laying the groundwork for it themselves.

[fastbilly1]

Being that this is a modular build, supported by Valve in some capacity, they could easily integrate a system checker into Steam and you could just push a button that says "can I run this game?" and it could tell you. Heck it could say your gpu is not powerful enough and open a link to the Steam page for a new gpu that can handle it. It could even go one step further and actually configure the game to run best on your hardware - but thats a bit of a pipe dream.

As long as they dont shutout standard PC gamers I do not see this as anything but a good thing. While it will get watered down console ports, it could get more people into PC gaming, which means more PC games.