Is THIS the SteamBox?

Hornet said:
PC gaming needs to be more accessible, not high end hardwares.

No where is it written that anyone who wants to play PC games should spend on high end graphics, there will always be a need to make PC games able to run on entry level hardware, with or without Valvebox. Valvebox merely make PC gaming more accessible which is what PC gaming needs. No company is interested in making games for a group of minority who spend on expensive hardware.

Note: by accessible I mean in terms of how easy it is to set the hardware up and play a game of course, nothing to do with gameplay. Setting up a gaming rig, optimizing performance and troubleshooting issues with running games will always be something that's reserved for the enthusiast crowd.
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Making what amounts to another console does not make PC gaming more accessible. If you want proof that Steam box is going to be just another console, look at how they are looking at only having games that can use a controller.

jpm100 said:
I'll tell you one thing. $400, 500, or 600 for a graphics card has gotten silly. I will never pay more than $250 for a graphics card. And if that relegates me to console level graphics why not go to a console then anyway. Really PC graphics industry has gone into the ditch lately. And if anything is spoiling PC gaming, its going to be the PC graphics arena.
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A $250 graphics card will get you graphics quality much better then a console.
 
HardUp4HardWare said:
This steambox thing is sounding more and more like vaporware. (Punny isn't it?)
Seriously, I read the recent Gabe article also and it just sounds like BS. Reminds me of when Trip Hawkins was talking up the M3 or whatever the successor to the 3d0 was supposed to be.

Also, what the Xi3 boxes lack in power they make up for with a high price tag. I would bet money that this never ever comes to light.
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Um, news about it only surfaced recently. Valve will be building their own system, preload it with Linux which is already setup for gaming, and that's it. Its not a console, it doesn't need its own SoC or whatever specific hardware a console needs. Its simply a Linux PC ready for gaming right out of the box. As Gabe mentioned, if you want to install Windows on it, go ahead they would not be making it hard to do that. Of course that would defeat the purpose of it, but its basically a pre-setup Linux PC customized for gaming and multimedia.

darkstarcow said:
Making what amounts to another console does not make PC gaming more accessible. If you want proof that Steam box is going to be just another console, look at how they are looking at only having games that can use a controller.
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Most PC games today already support controller due to their nature of being cross platform, with or without Steambox, it will be that way. Its just a gaming PC for the living room running on Linux. Any game that runs on it are PC games. So its basically opening up PC gaming to those who love gaming in their living room but lack the know-how to set up a HTPC, much less one running on Linux.
 
HardUp4HardWare said:
Seriously, I read the recent Gabe article also and it just sounds like BS. Reminds me of when Trip Hawkins was talking up the M3 or whatever the successor to the 3d0 was supposed to be.
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Reading the interview, my head was "3DO, 3DO, 3DO, 3DO......Stop it!......3DO, 3DO, fuck"
Looks like valve wants to have the least amount of "skin in the game", which might be a good thing for them if the idea fails. But then again, they are bring out their own box, and we do know what is supposed to be, a mini PC. The 3DO was always trying to be a multimedia box in an era where multimedia boxes didn't exist. Valve doesn't have that mountain to climb over.

This is far from ready, it sounds.
 
LeviathanZERO said:
This is far from ready, it sounds.
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They could do the box anytime. It is after all just a PC. I imagine there will be nothing stopping you from building your own "Steambox" once they release the minimum specs. I expect there is zero lock in. In that sense it is really nothing like a console.
 
Hornet said:
Most PC games today already support controller due to their nature of being cross platform, with or without Steambox, it will be that way. Its just a gaming PC for the living room running on Linux. Any game that runs on it are PC games. So its basically opening up PC gaming to those who love gaming in their living room but lack the know-how to set up a HTPC, much less one running on Linux.
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Yup, mostly a non-issue. Opening up the ability for traditional PC gamers and console gamers to play the same game together is the key here.
 
Parja said:
Yup, mostly a non-issue. Opening up the ability for traditional PC gamers and console gamers to play the same game together is the key here.
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How many games, particularly sequels have been released in the last couple years with shitty UI, FOV, inventory, etc... because of consoles and the limitations of a controller? a lot. Do you really want to say that dragging down what allows PC games to excel is a good thing?

If I wanted a shitty FOV, shitty inventory management, and shitty UI I would buy a console, which is what the steam box basically is.
 
darkstarcow said:
Do you really want to say that dragging down what allows PC games to excel is a good thing?
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Did I say anything of the sort? No sir.

You're going to have to accept that because it's going to continue whether there's a Steambox or not. Games are always going to get "dumbed down" for consoles because that's where the money's at. Why develop a game exclusively for PC when you can go cross-platform and make a shit ton more money?
 
Hornet said:
Um, news about it only surfaced recently. Valve will be building their own system, preload it with Linux which is already setup for gaming, and that's it. Its not a console, it doesn't need its own SoC or whatever specific hardware a console needs. Its simply a Linux PC ready for gaming right out of the box. As Gabe mentioned, if you want to install Windows on it, go ahead they would not be making it hard to do that. Of course that would defeat the purpose of it, but its basically a pre-setup Linux PC customized for gaming and multimedia.
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Don't get me wrong, I am all for the concept of a Steam machine. I just do not think this is it, and I do not think that Steam has enough Umph to get market share with a product that could achieve what he is talking about.

What is good about all of this is that there will be competition with the PS3, XBOX and Wii as well as a potential host of Android and other devices. Look at all these mini PC android devices and you can see where things are headed.

I say bring back the damn Dreamcast!!!!
 
Fooshnik said:
This is one of those things where, if it were a viable concept, it would've already been done.

You can build (or buy) a helluva gaming/htpc system for a grand (less actually) and have it around the same size as an Xbox. I love SFF, but with quadcore/medium end graphics the passive or near passive cooling seems inadequate. What if you're on 1.5mbit broadband and you want to play a 16 gig game this week? There's no alternate delivery medium. What happens when you run out of internal storage? The myriad of eSATA and USB 3 ports implies external expandability, but what's the point of your compact gaming system if it ends up looking like an octopus? What do you do when next year's game plays like ass? 1080p it still a fairly demanding resolution to run this year's games on high settings at 60fps. What does this thing do, will it run Word? If not, you've spent a grand on a slower system that's less versatile than the PC you could've bought.

It's been dreamed up before and it didn't work then.
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But you cant buy an already made up and ready SFF PC that works in the living room right out of the box, anyone who tries HTPCs knows this, and even if you could clearly such a company is not doing any advertising or getting their products into big box stores.

You guys are all underestimating the power of having a big company pushing a product. It is something we have never ever had in PC gaming. And we need it because millions of Americans have no idea what you can do with a PC.

Second you are doing this typical thing where you start trying to figure out problems and not solutions. It would be pretty easy for valve to modify their already intact system to allow people to make backups of games that auto install or run off blu rays or dvds.
 
So what are people thinking Gabe means by this:

The Steam Box will also be a server. Any PC can serve multiple monitors, so over time, the next-generation (post-Kepler) you can have one GPU that’s serving up eight simultaeneous game calls. So you could have one PC and eight televisions and eight controllers and everybody getting great performance out of it. We’re used to having one monitor, or two monitors — now we’re saying let's expand that a little bit.
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At first I read "server" and just though "ahh yeah, X is a display server whatever"... but with him referencing "post-Kepler" (which I guess would be Maxwell) and talking about simultaneous "game calls" on a single GPU I got a bit confused. Is he thinking something like a LAN party on a single GPU or... ?
 
It would be really cool if someone did soemthing like instancing in quake4 combined with a single steam box server so 8 people could have 4 sets of 1v1s. Of course lots of board and card games would work really well with this too.
 
jwcalla said:
At first I read "server" and just though "ahh yeah, X is a display server whatever"... but with him referencing "post-Kepler" (which I guess would be Maxwell) and talking about simultaneous "game calls" on a single GPU I got a bit confused. Is he thinking something like a LAN party on a single GPU or... ?
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Which sounds ok...but also means that the game will probably be made to use 1/8th of a GPU... Much like their current "no stressing teh Intel 1000" games. :D
 
jwcalla said:
At first I read "server" and just though "ahh yeah, X is a display server whatever"... but with him referencing "post-Kepler" (which I guess would be Maxwell) and talking about simultaneous "game calls" on a single GPU I got a bit confused. Is he thinking something like a LAN party on a single GPU or... ?
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it makes sense if you were following the miracast concept mentioned a couple times before that, the idea here is to be broadcasting wifi video from the same server to different displays, and taking input for single or multiple app instances. not really all that far off, the questionable bit here is handling the input, not the output though. we don't have any established standards for such a thing yet, here's hoping it's on valves to-do list, and in time for when we actually have the processing power to do it cheaply.

think like the onlive service but for lan, without the latency and failed business model and all that, to run something like a household steam library.
 
rudy said:
This is game changing simply because for the first time in the entire history of PC gaming someone is finally going to fight for us. For me I am more impressed than ever, I had my fears valve would make some proprietary console, but now it is looking like they are going the way we should have all been dreaming. Just making nice prepackaged systems anyone can throw in their living room. Not trying to get into the loss leader proprietary BS market of consoles.
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Essentially, it is an Xbox/PS just more opened up. Which is fine and a step in the right direction, though I don't see what the big deal is. If you're looking to play casual games then the current consoles already offer those. If you want a PC in the living room you can already do that.

The controller standard is nice as long as Valve doesn't start forcing flight sims/RTS games/whatever to use a controller because then they would be locking out the traditional PC only type games and it would end up being a casual game only system just like the Xbox/PS.
 
Flogger23m said:
If you want a PC in the living room you can already do that.
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Not really. Most people don't even know how to setup a basic PC system, let alone a gaming HTPC running on Linux.

This isn't aimed at users like [H] readers here. Its aimed at those who wants to buy something that can play video games right out of the box, without the need to worry about what hardware it should have, where to hunt for the drivers, etc. We've got to stop judging the market based on us the minority :p
 
One huge benefit to PC gaming that could come out of this is a standard flavor of Linux optimized for gaming, that lots of game companies start supporting with their games. I've thought for a long time how great it would be to have a gaming OS to dualboot along with Windows.

It could also mean good drivers support for a version of Linux. That would be a boon for indie development.
 
Hate to necro an old thread but wanted to warn people on the off chance anyone might still be considering trying to pre-order the $1000 "XI3 Piston" referenced in the first post. You may remember Valve distanced themselves from the Piston in a press statement that made the rounds in March, a few months after this way-unofficial third party box caught a lucky CES publicity wave in January. After Valve's PR statement denouncing the Piston as "NOT OFFICIAL STEAMBOX kthx", Xi3's "Founder, President, CEO" Jason Sullivan (he's actually just one guy operating out of his house) posted a weird retort back to Valve loaded with doublespeak trying to save face for unashamedly creating confusion and having no clue or experience with designing, supply-chaining, manufacturing, marketing, positioning this type of product. Not a clue..

Background: He initially contacted Valve claiming to be the designer/manufacturer of the miniPC, which he cleverly named Piston to create the perception endorsed/official product. He was then invited to display the miniPC in Valve's CES booth alongside many others after Valve thought "hey, cool form factor". Now the trouble started - he misrepresented himself as the designer/manufacturer of the box and so Valve generously gave him a check to "keep developing his idea". Now here I really blame Valve for not vetting him and his "company" more. But what really pissed Valve off was his next genius move which was trying to create perception his miniPC was the "Official Steambox", which resulted in a lot of negative publicity due to the confusion that ensued. He essentially trolled Valve's entire effort up to that point, of trying to create Steambox as an open initiative that would let anyone build one. And Valve had left themselves a huge blind spot for d-bags like Jason Sullivan to come along by not defining and structuring their initiative more clearly.

Fast forward to end of September now half a year since his public shaming and he's still at it - he's toned down the rhetoric but still trying to capture preorder funds at his website. Still hoping a few suckers wander in. It's important to understand he is not a designer/manufacturer with supply chain going on and product on-hand, he's just one guy that found a nice looking generic miniPC at a b2b/wholesaler frontend for chinese fabs (alibaba.com). And nothing wrong with what Sullivan is trying to do, but that's why everything on his site is preorder-only - he's got no capital so nothing on hand, doesn't design or manufacture anything, just reselling merch off alibaba and slaps his own logo sticker on the side. Again, nothing he's doing is technically illegal, there's just a pattern of behavior here that's hard to overlook. And despite Valve's C&D he's still playing games on twitter and facebook trying to grab cheap attention--albeit with more carefully chosen wording now. Honestly, I think he got real high off the sudden and unexpected publicity during CES and really believed it was his lottery moment, they figured out he wasn't who said he was, but he's still chasing the dream.

The day of Valve's SteamOS announcement:
Hey guys, here is the first exclusive gameplay footage of the #PISTONConsole, formerly known as the #steambox
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Showing a vague screenshot (which is GTA4) in the midst of GTA5's publicity wave and high demand for a PC version. click the vine link 4 broken dreams
We have some #PISTONConsole gameplay of Grand Theft Auto #GTAIVEFLC https://vine.co/v/hrvzpaDhtPr . Check it out!
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DPI said:
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It is reassuring to see that Apple didn't have a monopoly on the Unicorn Tears and Fairy Dust needed to make "magical products" ... at least now we can get magical stuff from Valve too :p
 
So how is Sullivan any different than most companies in the US? I am sorry but is ordering products from China, which half the brands you use today do, make you not a company? You realize that many brands like thermaltake were pretty much run out of someone's moms basement right? I don't want to take any specific side but it's fine for a startup to start this way, in fact that's how most of them do. If he was a fraud you would think his tactic would be to offer things for a fairly low price to try and get a ton of pre orders than run with the money.

I guess my problem is you are making a bunch of comments that make it seem like a company or a successful product can only be delivered if you meet all these arbitrary criteria, you would be pretty baffled when you found out about a lot of the businesses in this country then.
 
rudy said:
So how is Sullivan any different than most companies in the US? I am sorry but is ordering products from China, which half the brands you use today do, make you not a company? You realize that many brands like thermaltake were pretty much run out of someone's moms basement right? I don't want to take any specific side but it's fine for a startup to start this way, in fact that's how most of them do. If he was a fraud you would think his tactic would be to offer things for a fairly low price to try and get a ton of pre orders than run with the money.

I guess my problem is you are making a bunch of comments that make it seem like a company or a successful product can only be delivered if you meet all these arbitrary criteria, you would be pretty baffled when you found out about a lot of the businesses in this country then.
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Yeah I think that part of the criticism was a bit unfair. Most of these businesses started off as some lone jabroni just trying to make a buck.
 
Leave it to rudy to always miss the point ;) "yeah, but..." . I kid, I kid.

It wasn't an indictment of entrepreneurs or reselling products from china. It's the way Sullivan conducted and misrepresented himself, took a check from Valve under false pretenses (of which they handed out many - basically everyone they invited to show miniPC's at Valve's CES booth), was told by Gabe himself the check did NOT imply an endorsement, then proceeded to troll the technosphere by very carefully twisting the facts around "That's right we're working VERY closely with Valve on THE Steambox!" -- that was the point. If you want to do business with someone like that then knock yourself out. Enjoy.
 
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Heh - its basically like if you got drunk and met a girl at a party and then the next day she's posting on your FB feed how you're both "in love and getting married and having a [oprah voice] "BAY-BEEEE!"

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I'm more excited about the modular gamepad instead. Gotta put in a trackball/pad to replace that right analog stick.
 
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MetalX said:
I know you're dying to use an image from your 4chan folder, but updating topics in threads already created is how we do things around here.
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Actually, he has a point.
This thread was about Xi3, which is completely irrelevant now. This thread should not have been necro'd.
 
LeviathanZERO said:
Actually, he has a point.
This thread was about Xi3, which is completely irrelevant now. This thread should not have been necro'd.
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Its irrelevant only to anyone that's following tech news constantly. Meanwhile, google "steambox" and the Xi3 Piston is still all over the results like a bad smell... including all of the image results. If even one fellow [H]'er is saved from this xi3 treachery, all will have been worth it.

EDIT: And now this xi3 guy is firing up the troll train again, having managed to get himself mentioned on Kotaku because he put up a bullshit "The wait is over" screen on his website trying to insert himself into the buzz of Valve's announcements this week. Dude does not know when to quit. And naturally the comment sections are once again exploding with "hurr durr $1000 way too expensive Steambox SUXX"
 
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MetalX said:
I know you're dying to use an image from your 4chan folder, but updating topics in threads already created is how we do things around here.
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We've both been here for longer than 8 years... I respectfully disagree with the above. There is a difference between updating a thread that is a few weeks old and dabbling in necromancy. This was a Xi3 thread from a billion years ago (in Internet time). He should have created a new thread.

And I found that image in a Google Image search 30 seconds before I posted it.
 
They released the specs of the prototypes. I want the one that comes with a titan and 4770k.
 
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