Valve's Steam Machine Prototype

Flogger23m said:
If someone wanted a plug and play gaming machine they would buy a console. Essentially what you are saying is, will people buy a console that costs twice as much as its competitor when all it offers are better graphics. The answer is no for the vast majority of console gamers.
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This doesn't have to appeal to the vast majority of console gamers. Just enough of them to make money.

If that was the case, Sony (or Microsoft) could have slapped in a faster CPU/GPU and raised the price to $800-900. Obviously they are trying to keep the price down and are shooting for the $400-500 mark. Why? Because if they charge $900, people will go for the $400-500 option. If they wanted high end graphics they would spring for an expensive PC.
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It's a different model that may be too confusing for the mass console market. What they are doing here is carving out a portion if that market. It's not about appealing to the entire pc market or entirely to the console market. It's about creating a value proposition that appeals to a subset of those markets. I don't get why this is so hard for people to understand. Consoles and pcs have pluses and minuses and you make your purchase decision based on them. This will have its own set of pluses and minuses that blends the two. Price isn't the only reason people choose a console over a pc, graphics isn't the only reason people choose a pc over a console.
 
maverikv said:
I don't get why this is so hard for people to understand.
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We understand... we just don't think there's enough people in the niche of a niche that the Steam PC is trying to appeal to in order to make it a worthwhile endeavour. At least that's how I feel.
 
Food for thought...
Does the Steam Box REALLY NEED a high end gpu?
Valve's intent is to get the pc into the living room, so we are looking at 1080p tops for games that are going to go that high.
Hell Valve could even get a decent mid ranged card by AMD or Nvidia for it with just a HDMI out further reducing costs, order them from someone like EVGA or something.
I'm liking the basic design, and think it needs a SSD instead of something with platters.
Another thing it could use is a SATA hot swap bay where we could use either an additional hard drive or disk drive.
 
SGA76 said:
Food for thought...
Does the Steam Box REALLY NEED a high end gpu?
Valve's intent is to get the pc into the living room, so we are looking at 1080p tops for games that are going to go that high.
Hell Valve could even get a decent mid ranged card by AMD or Nvidia for it with just a HDMI out further reducing costs, order them from someone like EVGA or something.
I'm liking the basic design, and think it needs a SSD instead of something with platters.
Another thing it could use is a SATA hot swap bay where we could use either an additional hard drive or disk drive.
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Nah, it doesn't need a high-end GPU. They're releasing quite a few different system configurations for the beta since the SteamBox will eventually come in all shapes and power levels, from your basic integrated GPU box to full on GTX780 boxes. Since it will be 3rd parties making the SteamBoxes, choice will be plentiful.
 
One more thing..
Most pcs you buy are subsidized through gigs of bloatware and nagware.
Unless there's a way to install it, the Steam Box may just wind up being more expensive than a Windows box.
 
looking go so far can't wait to see how it unfolds with the differant hardware options.
 
GaryJohnson said:
By the time steam boxes are actually something you can buy the GTX780 might not be a high end GPU.
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I don't know. The GTX780 will still be a decently high GPU for 2 years+ I'd think. I'm sure by that time there will be something as powerful that uses less power.
 
GaryJohnson said:
By the time steam boxes are actually something you can buy the GTX780 might not be a high end GPU.
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Given it's just an off the shelf GPU, that's not really a problem, they can just swap it for another card if better ones are available by then. It's not like a regular console where they have to custom manufacture the things.
 
maverikv said:
This doesn't have to appeal to the vast majority of console gamers. Just enough of them to make money.
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No. It has to sell enough volume, to get developers porting games to Linux, otherwise it is useless.

The odds of this happening make Roulette wheels look like a good bet.

From another front page story:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1789427
"While Osborne wouldn't be heavily drawn into talking about a PC version of the upcoming shooter, he reiterated what we've heard from him before: it's a possibility, but don't expect it any time soon. "It’s a huge challenge to ship four platforms and a massive opportunity to reach a new audience," he said. "We know there are a lot of people out there asking for PC and we know that there are a lot of gamers that would willingly give us money, but what we have to do is make sure we’re focused enough to bring a good experience to any platform that we ship on. What we 100 percent are not going to do is spread ourselves so thin that it negatively harms the other platforms. So right now we have the four platforms, which is a lot to focus on."

Think about that. They are having a hard time deciding if it is worth porting effort to do a Windows PC version.

SteamOS/Linux is not even going to have 1% of the market that Windows does for gaming. It is effectively dead before it starts.
 
8du8 said:
I only install that I am currently playing. Back them up when I'm "done" with them.
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If you're a beta tester I would think they want you playing multiple games and downloading in off-hourslike overnight which would require multiple installs for best efficiency. Precludes an SSD.
 
Snowdog said:
No. It has to sell enough volume, to get developers porting games to Linux, otherwise it is useless.

The odds of this happening make Roulette wheels look like a good bet.

From another front page story:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1789427
"While Osborne wouldn't be heavily drawn into talking about a PC version of the upcoming shooter, he reiterated what we've heard from him before: it's a possibility, but don't expect it any time soon. "It’s a huge challenge to ship four platforms and a massive opportunity to reach a new audience," he said. "We know there are a lot of people out there asking for PC and we know that there are a lot of gamers that would willingly give us money, but what we have to do is make sure we’re focused enough to bring a good experience to any platform that we ship on. What we 100 percent are not going to do is spread ourselves so thin that it negatively harms the other platforms. So right now we have the four platforms, which is a lot to focus on."

Think about that. They are having a hard time deciding if it is worth porting effort to do a Windows PC version.

SteamOS/Linux is not even going to have 1% of the market that Windows does for gaming. It is effectively dead before it starts.
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:rolleyes: I guess Valve should have hired you to head product development so you could have killed these two projects before they started. I guess we will see who is right. I see a market for it.
 
maverikv said:
:rolleyes: I guess Valve should have hired you to head product development so you could have killed these two projects before they started. I guess we will see who is right. I see a market for it.
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i dont see a market for it, but i REALLY hope i'm wrong. :)
 
maverikv said:
:rolleyes: I guess Valve should have hired you to head product development so you could have killed these two projects before they started. I guess we will see who is right. I see a market for it.
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Valve really wants this to happen, so they will pursue it, even if it is a long-shot as long as they aren't betting the company on it.

They really aren't going to get big time into the PC HW game, they are just trying to seed the market and hoping OEMs take up the torch.

Kind of like Microsoft did when they built Surface RT and got Lenovo/Dell/Asus to join them in Selling RT machines. A lot of us saw that flop coming as well.

Some things just don't have a strong business case, and are done more because some company thinks they can move the market in their direction. That seldom works out.

That looks like the case here. The tiny group that find Windows "too hard" to deal with for a gaming PC, but consoles too limited, seems like it would be vanishingly small at best. Then factor in that this system will have far fewer games than either a console or a PC, and it is hard to see why anyone would be interested.
 
Snowdog said:
Valve really wants this to happen, so they will pursue it, even if it is a long-shot as long as they aren't betting the company on it.
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Wrong. The "betting the company" move would be if Valve sat around in total denial that Microsoft has begun the phaseout of third party software stores with the move to Metro and the Windows Metro App Store or whatever theyre calling it this week. Like being diagnosed with cancer and doing nothing just 'hoping it goes away'.

No offense but this really isn't brain surgery here. Valve will remain on Windows as long as its allowed to, so not sure why people are so whiny/threatened about this.
 
DPI said:
Valve will remain on Windows as long as its allowed to,
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So in other words, forever. I know that there's a lot of talk about the Windows desktop going away but there's just no way that happens anytime soon and it's hard to see how that benefits Microsoft as long as there are other desktop operating systems. In fact it seems a little ironic that Windows actually supports Steam on tablets, there are a ton of YouTube videos out there with people running Steam games on these new Bay Trail tablets.

At the end of the day I bet there's an order of magnitude more Windows tablets running Steam than there will ever be Steam Boxes.
 
heatlesssun said:
So in other words, forever. I know that there's a lot of talk about the Windows desktop going away but there's just no way that happens anytime soon and it's hard to see how that benefits Microsoft as long as there are other desktop operating systems. In fact it seems a little ironic that Windows actually supports Steam on tablets, there are a ton of YouTube videos out there with people running Steam games on these new Bay Trail tablets.

At the end of the day I bet there's an order of magnitude more Windows tablets running Steam than there will ever be Steam Boxes.
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I don't think Valve is trying to topple Microsoft.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
I don't think Valve is trying to topple Microsoft.
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I don't think so either. I do get the idea that Valve doesn't like the idea of the Windows Store and would like another platform independent of Windows to setup it's store. Nothing wrong with that other than it's a lot of work for probably not a lot of gain unless the Windows desktop were to go away, and that's just not happening any time soon, if ever. This notion that Microsoft is doing away with the desktop of 3rd party stores is just a wild ass guess. Indeed Microsoft's tablet strategy right now is very much tied to the idea of hybrid design considering that Windows RT at this point is largely considered a failure and the selling point of these Bay Trail devices is that they have the desktop and even can run a lot of Steam games.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
I don't think Valve is trying to topple Microsoft.
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Clearly Gabe is freaked about Win8 and this is his response:
http://allthingsd.com/20120725/valv...-games-wearable-computers-windows-8-and-more/

“We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It’s a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality."

I think the Catastrophe for Gabe is a Windows 8 store.
 
heatlesssun said:
I don't think so either. I do get the idea that Valve doesn't like the idea of the Windows Store and would like another platform independent of Windows to setup it's store. Nothing wrong with that other than it's a lot of work for probably not a lot of gain unless the Windows desktop were to go away, and that's just not happening any time soon, if ever. This notion that Microsoft is doing away with the desktop of 3rd party stores is just a wild ass guess.
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07-minister.jpg


Yeah okay. You better give Paul Thurrott's article another read: http://windowsitpro.com/windows-8/windows-desktop-death ... He's certainly excited about seeing the desktop die. And I've read statements from Microsoft developers on their MSDN blogs basically reaffirming it, quote "The sooner we can get away from Win32 and the desktop, the better".

The worst kind of shill is sitting here doublespeaking "its not happening" and then when it happens you're going to say "well who didn't see this coming". Get a grip. If SteamOS and the Steambox are as much a nonfactor as Microsoft shills and investors insist then nothing to be nervous about, is there. Again, its a hedging strategy. This is what CEO's do, they see longterm, while everyone else quibbles about the now and the now only.
 
DPI said:
The worst kind of shill is sitting here doublespeaking "its not happening" and then when it happens you're going to say "well who didn't see this coming". Get a grip. If SteamOS and the Steambox are as much a nonfactor as Microsoft shills and investors insist then nothing to be nervous about, is there. Again, its a hedging strategy. This is what CEO's do, they see longterm, while everyone else quibbles about the now and the now only.
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Here's the thing. You can't write Windows software, even Metro apps, without the desktop. Call me a shill all you want, saying that Microsoft is just going to get rid of the desktop makes no sense and there's no feasible way that you or Paul Thurott or anyone can even begin to explain HOW that even works at so many levels. And how does it benefit Microsoft to simply drop the thing it still utterly dominates?

How about less name calling and more actually making a logical case.
 
Tudz said:
Yeah, I'm not "against" SteamOS, but I do look at it and think "err, why?".
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Valve explains:
Thousands of games, millions of users. Everything you love about Steam.
Available soon as a free operating system designed for the TV and the living room.
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Windows is not designed for the TV nor for the living room. Nor is OS X. Nor is Ubuntu or any other mainstream Linux distribution. A Steambox gets you a PC in your living room with (supposedly) no fuss, and the goal is to get all the games you play on your desktop into the living room.

If there's one sentence that really summarizes what they're trying to accomplish here, it's this: Valve's trying to leverage an increasingly-prevalent open source operating system, commodity PC hardware and their existing user- and game-base to get fewer dedicated game consoles into living rooms.
 
wonderfield said:
Valve explains:

Windows is not designed for the TV nor for the living room. Nor is OS X. Nor is Ubuntu or any other mainstream Linux distribution. A Steambox gets you a PC in your living room with (supposedly) no fuss, and the goal is to get all the games you play on your desktop into the living room.
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Now here is someone drinking the koolaide.

Valve isn't re-writing Linux, they aren't writing a display driver, they are writing a new display server.

"SteamOs" is no more designed for the TV than Windows is.

Valve is just running Steam Big Picture Mode on Linux. That is all. There is nothing special here. It is bog standard Linux, same crufty display server, same questionable drivers, same warts.
 
Windows intent may not be with the tv but it sure works Damn well with one.
 
wonderfield said:
If there's one sentence that really summarizes what they're trying to accomplish here, it's this: Valve's trying to leverage an increasingly-prevalent open source operating system, commodity PC hardware and their existing user- and game-base to get fewer dedicated game consoles into living rooms.
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So what do you call a system that plays games and has a web browser and not much of anything else? To me that pretty much makes it a dedicated console, that plays PC games instead of the typical console ones. PC gaming console.
 
Snowdog said:
Now here is someone drinking the koolaide.
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You laid out the bait in the very first sentence? That only saves me time. Probably not what you'd intended.

Trimlock said:
Windows intent may not be with the tv but it sure works Damn well with one.
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If you're using a keyboard and mouse, yes, it's workable. If you don't, you're in fairly bad shape.

03grandam said:
So what do you call a system that plays games and has a web browser and not much of anything else? To me that pretty much makes it a dedicated console, that plays PC games instead of the typical console ones. PC gaming console.
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Semantics. I'm disinterested.
 
Hehehe ... Windows/Linux don't work on TV's?

Wow.

PC's don't have game controls or steering wheels or flight controls? Amazing.

Truth is a well equipped PC+TV > Console. It is more flexible.
 
How is this steambox any different than any other game-centric htpc? I don't get why everyone's looking to reinvent the wheel here - just make a slim-down (lite) version of win7/8 for games with a standard collection of unified drivers. PC gaming to most means windows, and valve's running away from it.
I've also been using my xbox 360 controller on all of my pc games (on my htpc) for the past few years, and a wireless $40 logitech k/b for browsing. Given how ubiquitous the console ports have been , and how ironically enough, a good chunk of all steam games are (and probably will be), again, I don't see the the point to this gaming o/s.
 
sonicboom said:
How is this steambox any different than any other game-centric htpc? I don't get why everyone's looking to reinvent the wheel here - just make a slim-down (lite) version of win7/8 for games with a standard collection of unified drivers. PC gaming to most means windows, and valve's running away from it.
I've also been using my xbox 360 controller on all of my pc games (on my htpc) for the past few years, and a wireless $40 logitech k/b for browsing. Given how ubiquitous the console ports have been , and how ironically enough, a good chunk of all steam games are (and probably will be), again, I don't see the the point to this gaming o/s.
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This. Though I do see the appeal of a system that is a little more plug and play. I too have my main PC in the living room, using Xbox360 wireless controller + Xpadder and a K400 for all other navigation. It has taken quite a bit of tweaking to get everything to launch smoothly from Steam Big Picture Mode (including Emulators) and have controller profiles switch accordingly. But it goes pretty smoothly now. You can also use something like this, a combination of controller, air mouse and keyboard for those who switch back and forth frequently between gaming and other apps.

While I do absolutely love that Valve is developing an "official" Steambox, the Steambox concept has been implemented by DIYers for sometime now with decent success (myself included).
 
sonicboom said:
How is this steambox any different than any other game-centric htpc? I don't get why everyone's looking to reinvent the wheel here - just make a slim-down (lite) version of win7/8 for games with a standard collection of unified drivers.
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Valve doesn't have the ability to build and distribute a slimmed-down, gaming-centric version of Windows for the living room. They do have the ability to modify open-source operating systems and software to build a gaming-centric platform for the living room.
 
No reason you can't make your own custom Win7/8 installation using r7lite and take out the bloat you don't feel you need.
 
Since Windows licenses are free, those are completely valid options.
 
remember windows takes up extra ram and cpu power, going a slim linux should allow for more power the only thing they need to work on is a great linux gpu driver / sound drivers. remember the first kind of working xbox emulator was called bleem and the windows version ran a lot slower compared to the bleem os which was a linux version mainly because windows itself takes a good amount of cpu and ram.
 
TheBuzzer said:
remember windows takes up extra ram and cpu power, going a slim linux should allow for more power the only thing they need to work on is a great linux gpu driver / sound drivers. remember the first kind of working xbox emulator was called bleem and the windows version ran a lot slower compared to the bleem os which was a linux version mainly because windows itself takes a good amount of cpu and ram.
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Windows doesn't require the ram it uses, the purpose is to use free extra space when it can and open up the space dynamically. Not sure what you mean by using extra cpu.

heatlesssun said:
There is Windows Embedded though I don't know how or if that would work for well in this case.
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I tried this rout for htpc, didn't work well. I may try it again but I believe my problem was drivers.
 
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