Steam Machine the future of gaming?

[BIGPADDY]

Hi All

Well you haven't heard steam is releasing an PC with there own OS SteamOS which are aiming at the console market kind of if you can afford the prices.

With it unique controller as well which I really like the design off!

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-10-07-valve-reveals-specs-of-its-steam-machine-prototype

So anyone interested?

 

[montsa007]

RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600 (CPU), 3GB GDDR5 (GPU)
Lol, that thing alone can buy me a villa in California

 

[BIGPADDY]

RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600 (CPU), 3GB GDDR5 (GPU)
Lol, that thing alone can buy me a villa in California

There are cheaper models but still experience.

 

[squire777]

Not really interested. I think I will still do my PC gaming on my PC and my console gaming on my TV.

Most gamers who build high-end systems will probably not want to ditch their rigs for something like that. Though I see people like University students or people that buy Alienware laptops buying Steam Box

 

[gsquared]

No interest here. I already have a gaming rig and don't plan on upgrading / replacing it any time soon.

 

[ImmortalWarrior]

The reddit circlejerk over how awesome Gaben is won't help this be a success.

The problem from an accessibility standpoint is that it's complicated. Linux - no matter the distro - is not friendly to an average Joe. Hooking up a computer to my computer to play games from my computer on the tv? Most people won't get it. That's where this will fail. It needs to market to the average Joe and, by design, the concept is already too complex for the average Joe.

 

[SnailUK]

What i don't understand, is what SteamOS is meant to achieve.

People have always liked Console gaming, because its a stable base, you buy the hardware, it works for years. I always thought the purpose of SteamOS was to create a more stable hardware base for PCs, meaning there is less hardware varience, so developers can focus on a smaller hardware base. But it seems OEMs are just creating their own SteamOS devices, with all different specs, leaving SteamOS in exactly the same situation as PC gaming, that there is tons of hardware varience, and therefore people at the low end will have trouble with some games.

SteamOS just seems like a way of pushing gamers to using Linux, but doing nothing to do with reducing the issues that push gamers towards consoles rather than PCs.

 

[Coreldan]

Not interested nor do I think it will exactly be the future of gaming either. Pro sides are you can basically build your own gaming console, but as with PCs the problem always is the inconsistant hardware. I'm typically a PC gamer but having seen GTA V, my jaw dropped cos I had no idea it could be done with hardware that old. And it can't be really replicated on a platform that doesnt have fixed specs either.

I guess this has some potential for some crowd, but I doubt it ever makes it into mainstream.

 

[omgitsnick]

Not interested. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have years of software and hardware experience in terms of gaming tech, and what Valve is doing is simply making their own Linux distro and installing that on a high end PC. That's like installing Puppy Linux on an Alienware.

 

[ImmortalWarrior]

Not interested nor do I think it will exactly be the future of gaming either. Pro sides are you can basically build your own gaming console, but as with PCs the problem always is the inconsistant hardware. I'm typically a PC gamer but having seen GTA V, my jaw dropped cos I had no idea it could be done with hardware that old. And it can't be really replicated on a platform that doesnt have fixed specs either.

I guess this has some potential for some crowd, but I doubt it ever makes it into mainstream.

The graphics on GTA5 are good, but I've been seeing graphics that good on my PC since the inception of the current Gen consoles. I look at it and am disappointed it's not on PC.

 

[Coreldan]

The graphics on GTA5 are good, but I've been seeing graphics that good on my PC since the inception of the current Gen consoles. I look at it and am disappointed it's not on PC.

Ofc, I'm not saying that they're comparable graphics and performance to something like BF3 on Ultra, but what I'm saying is that it's really impressive how they've manage to do that on 10 year old hardware. High end PCs (or even mid-range at some point) will always look better, no doubt about it, but the thing is that most people don't get to run it at such graphics and performance ever on a PC. I see the beauty of consoles largely that you will keep getting nice performance/graphics as long as the console is being supported instead of buying a new game on PC just to find out that with your combination of components, you're stuck with 20 fps on low graphics. Then when you upgrade and the next big thing comes around, you're in the same place again. Then again, the beauty of PCs is just that, upgradability, but I can't really recall a single game I've played the last years I've had a gaming desktop that hasn't had me come across the question of optimization and/or performance in general. Consoles are just so worry free in this sense, cos the games have been optimized for the same hardware EVERYONE has (well, short from like PS vs. Xbox, but they usually optimize for lowest denominator then)

 

[ImmortalWarrior]

That's exactly the advantage of consoles. The hardware stays the same and therefore easily optimized.

PC gaming has gotten very affordable now. I can build a PC for 800 bucks that runs most new games on high settings. That same PC is easily upgradeable and does much more than just play games. 800 bucks well spent.

Now... If you're me, that 800 dollars goes into your water cooling components alone. Here's my machine: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=6308A4890111A3C5!7463&authkey=!AMkklVmAJEcb4OY&v=3

 

[DavidinCT]

That's exactly the advantage of consoles. The hardware stays the same and therefore easily optimized.

PC gaming has gotten very affordable now. I can build a PC for 800 bucks that runs most new games on high settings. That same PC is easily upgradeable and does much more than just play games. 800 bucks well spent.

Now... If your me, that 800 dollars goes into your water cooling components alone. Here's my machine: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=6308A4890111A3C5!7463&authkey=!AMkklVmAJEcb4OY&v=3

Nice rig...Was thinking about doing watercooling in my next rig (maybe a year or 2 as my current one is working good).

Steambox...Hmmm... Does anyone know what SteamOS is based on ? Is this a Windows embedded machine so it can play all current Windows based games or is it a whole new thing needed devs to rewrite code to support SteamOS ? This could cause Steam to have a very small library of games to start and with that it would fail almost out of the gate.

If I buy a Xbox (360/One) or PS (3/4) I have some expectations off that, that the system will run games with no problems at close to max of the hardware level and all AAA games will be avilable for me. Devs do a prettty good job on maxing the hardware that is current systems.

With a SteamOS box, I expect it like a computer, as new games for the PC come out all the time and they should be available for that. I have been PC gaming for MANY years now, I know, if I want to play they newest game at the max level (Crysis comes to mind), I need to dump a few $$ every year (at least a video card upgrade) to keep the specs high enough to play current games. Then I see a few different levels of Steambox, that means that some games will run and others will not run at top level.

When I play PC games, I pay a price so I can play these games with the max performance and the highest level of graphics. I'm not sure the steambox would be able to keep up, maybe for a while but, not that long.

Steam is trying to get PC games into your living room. I'm wondering how well this will do. With different levels of hardware, it will confuse the customer, and your part time gamers (who dont know PC very well) would not even look at this. I'm not even sure how successful this will even be.

Personally, I use a Home theater PC (Windows Media Center as a DVR and other features) and all I need is a minor upgrade(new video card) and I could play all current games in 1080P using a Xbox controller to play them with a nice interface that I can select via remote with nice metadata for each game.

WHy the heck would I think about getting the steam box ?

 

[HeyCori]

Controller demo

[video=youtube;eeAjkbNq4xI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eeAjkbNq4xI[/video]

Looks pretty good, easy to use, but it remains to be seen how the controller will handle games that require more than just shoulder buttons.

 

[BIGPADDY]

Nice rig...Was thinking about doing watercooling in my next rig (maybe a year or 2 as my current one is working good).

Steambox...Hmmm... Does anyone know what SteamOS is based on ? Is this a Windows embedded machine so it can play all current Windows based games or is it a whole new thing needed devs to rewrite code to support SteamOS ? This could cause Steam to have a very small library of games to start and with that it would fail almost out of the gate.

It built on Linux.

 

[tissotti]

It built on Linux.

True, though just to make it sure you can naturally install whatever you want there. It's a PC rig with multiple configurations (by valve and 3rd parties) optimized for gaming in a compact shell without Windows license and special control.


Personally much more interested about the Steam machine, though I don't think it will change gaming. That's already happening with the casual games. Valve and the likes of AMD are moving quite strongly against Microsoft these past months. Microsoft has been absolutely horrible with DirectX and AMD is on its way to do its own solution after the announcement week ago.
For Microsoft it's complicated as on Xbox they can control much of the distribution. On PC side Valve/Steam controls the distribution and the likes of AMD are naturally worried about MS's current focus.


At worse Microsoft could be losing on both fields in the coming years. To Sony on consoles and Valve on PC gaming.

 

[Jas00555]

I personally don't see it taking off. Sure, it'll exist as a nice niche to show off and it'll have amazing graphics, but it just won't have enough support. Assuming every PC game was rewritten from Windows to Linux (which it won't), it'll still be like Windows Phone in that you'll have Xbox and PS people going "cool, does it have this game?" and it may have it, but gta5 was the most anticipated game of pretty much all time, breaking 7 Guinness book world records and when you tell someone "well no, but it has" they'll stop listening.

I'm also not excited about the controller, but I'll have to wait until I get one to make a fair judgment.