Entertainment is not a one-size-fits-all world. We want you to be able to choose the hardware that makes sense for you, so we are working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS.
Where Sony and Microsoft follow the iOS model for consoles, Valve is aiming for the Android model, including Valve’s own line of ‘Nexus’ devices. As Valves notes, no restrictions – you can change the hardware, software, and install any operating system you want. The right approach, obviously.
The cooperation between Valve and NVIDIA is quite close, as NVIDIA details on its blog:
Engineers from Valve and NVIDIA have spent a lot of time collaborating on a common goal for SteamOS: to deliver an open-platform gaming experience with superior performance and uncompromising visuals directly on the big screen.
NVIDIA engineers embedded at Valve collaborated on improving driver performance for OpenGL; optimizing performance on NVIDIA GPUs; and helping to port Valve’s award-winning content library to SteamOS; and tuning SteamOS to lower latency, or lag, between the controller and onscreen action.
This is going to be big. After being defeated in mobile, it seems Microsoft is facing another frontal assault on another one of its strongholds: gaming, whether it be Windows or Xbox.
If it runs some variant of Redhat (feora) or debian or something similar, so i can install firefox and the rest, I will be first in line.
I bet it’ll be an Ubuntu/Debian derivative.
SteamOS will be based on Ubuntu 12.04
There’s already a repo.
http://repo.steampowered.com/hometest/dists/
“hometest” doesn’t sound like Steam Machine but like a test-environment to test the standalone steam client which is available for Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, etc. etc.
Edited 2013-09-26 10:14 UTC
The word hometest isn’t the clue, it’s the contents of the repo which give it away.
I don’t need to explain, this page does it well enough:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM0MDc
“Their known repository just has contained the Steam and Steam Launcher packages for Debian/Ubuntu-based distributions. What’s of interest within this new “hometest” repository. The repository notes that this is for “Steam packages and updates for Steam based on Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS.”
Found within the package pool are experimental NVIDIA Linux graphics drivers, a Plymouth boot splash screen for Steam, and Valve wallpapers. There’s also the Steam Linux client binary already offered to Linux gamers. A “steam-autoupdate” package is also present, which all it does is drop in a daily cron job of running the apt-get upgrade process in an automated manner. “
It’s gonna be a part of DEB universe.
*tips fedora*
Fedora support debs just fine. But deb distros have silly file names for libraries, so much of a ln -s will be required.
Considering there are already applications in steam, I’m betting they’re going to be adding apps like those.
It’s not exactly a big leap to see steam as being the package management GUI for steamOS :p
I’m wondering what they’ll be doing for audio and video playback out of the box – which applications, which content providing partners, etc.
Netflix isn’t available in my country, but from what I’ve heard, it’s like steam for TV shows and movies, so…
The basic plan seems to be to commoditise the console market. Which is basically what Android did for mobiles. One wonders if this will pay off for Valve in the same way? It’s certainly an interesting direction for them to take.
It will certainly profit Valve in the same way what benefits Google from Anroid, however in a different way. The good thing is that not only Valve will reap the benefits, but consumers and the rest of the hardware community as long as they support SteamOS.
I’ve never used or owned a console, but the way I’ve seen the graphics quality of console games, gaming on a P.C. is the best experience, and you have the best controllers. A P.C. can be anything you want it to be as a computing platform, upgrade or add RAM/Disk/GPU, but a console is a lock-down console and you can’t easily upgrade it overnight not to mention the running OS and the games you’ve purchased.
Edited 2013-09-25 23:59 UTC
PCs come with keyboard and mouse by default, not normal couch approved controllers like xbox or ps ones, so no, PCs do not have best controllers.
And how is this going to compete with consoles? One OS – okay. But what about one hardware? Graphics do not matter that much when you play from your couch. It’s just a PC. Consoles – way different mindset.
To be quite frank, I haven’t seen Gabe or Valve themselves placing themselves as trying to compete with consoles, I’ve only seen commenters on the Internet placing them like that; Valve is just trying to cement their place as the de factor games delivery platform on the PC – market so that if/when Microsoft eventually locks them out of Windows they won’t fade away. It’s just plain wrong to keep comparing Steam Machines to consoles and think of this as a fight between them when Steam Machines are PCs, not consoles, and this isn’t a duel between them, this is them overlapping one another.
Even if Steam Machines never so much as take a single percent of the market share of consoles it’s no loss for Valve or considered a failure as long as their plan within the PC – segment works.
I might be shortsighted but I can’t see that happening any time soon. As matter of fact Windows 8 and STEAM have been living happily side by side since I switched from Windows 7 about one year ago — and in the meantime I’ve bought quite a few games from STEAM and exactly none from Microsoft’s store.
At the moment I can’t see the value proposition here: given that I’m already playing all the titles I care about on Windows, what am I going to gain from switching to a different OS/platform? What’s Valve going to gain considering that I’m already a customer? Also, my PC is already connected to the TV and no, it’s not terribly loud (and the games are far more louder anyway). Why should I want to stream them instead while I wait for “all the AAA titles coming natively to SteamOS in 2014”?
Last but not least: let’s not forget that STEAM is a subscription service. True, there’s no monthly fee, but that’s what it really is. Fail to accept the next modification to their ToS and see how many games you’ll be able to play. I seldom go back to a game once I’m done with it, but still…
RT.
And if you’d read what I wrote I never once mentioned *current* situation, I was talking about the future.
If you have nothing to gain then you’re not part of the target audience.
See above. I mean, there *are* people who do want a console-like PC and there are households where being able to stream games from one computer to another would actually be useful proposition. Think of e.g. families with lots of kids or families where there’s a need for simple, gaming-oriented platform that can be operated simply with a gamepad. Even just being able to stream stuff from a more-powerful PC to a weaker one would quite likely come in handy in such homes, like e.g. you have to keep an eye on the kids or something but you still want to be able to play — plop a laptop where you can see them, stream the game from the desktop, profit.
No one is saying Steam Machines are supposed to cater to *everyone.* I have no use for them myself, either, but I’m not that self-centered that I can’t think of other people who would have use for them.
Yes, that is true. However, how is that related to the discussion at hand? It’s nothing new, it’s been like that ever since Valve started selling games on Steam.
Well, I did or the would have been no reply. No one can possibly know what things are going to be like in, say, 3 or 5 years from now, therefore I prefer to stick to the facts rather than make assumptions which, incidentally, just reveal our bias/desires/fears on any given subject. Also, in the future we’re going to be all dead and I’d rather not think about that! 😉
I thought that consoles have proved to be fairly good at that and I suspect that in many of the households in your example there is already one. But, on the other hand, I imagine that Valve did their homework, then some math, and ended up with a number they like.
But then again, this would target existing gamers with existing STEAM accounts, and I’m not so sure that this feature alone is enough to expand the user base, not to mention that gamers can be extremely picky about responsiveness, frame rates and overall image quality — some to the point that they care more about the technical details than the game itself.
I mentioned it because most people seem to be overly excited about this. I don’t know if it is because it’s Valve or because SteamOS is based on Linux (or both) but let’s do a reality check: Valve is not our bosom buddy. No company is and, should it prove any good for the bottom line, no company would hesitate to screw us over.
Still, I’m at least curious about this and, as I wrote in another post, I’ll keep an eye on future developments.
RT.
Well, I for one:
A) Don’t have a console.
B) use a Windows 7 powered PC to connect to my Big Screen TV for watching Free to air and play games, currently on the only Windows box left in my house and
C) would Much prefer a Linux Gamebox/TV/Entertainment player.
Being time poor, I haven’t been able to follow through on getting a working combo that fits the mix currently in place.
This would fit my needs Perfectly and therefore am very interested in this turn of hand by Steam.
🙂
I guess I fit that Target Audience just fine…
Yes, ok, P.C. might not have the best controller, my mistake. What I have in mind though is that a mouse+keyboard combination is what I prefer when playing games, especially for RTS. However, controller manufacturers can just easily build controls for PCs since after a console is also a computer. If Valve did not have in mind to compete with consoles, it just happened when they want you to use their SteamOS on your living room in addition to your console.
But I will argue on the graphics side, it will matter much for P.C. gamers, more hi-resolution monitor and graphic intensive games, the better even if you play from your couch, it is just console gamers who don’t care that much I think.
A developer’s dream!
Being able to target a fixed set of hardware/software, extract every drop of juice of it, without having to think about driver issues, installed libraries, OS versions, running applications besides the game, types of controllers one decides to plugin, …
They already make money from gaming and moving into having a gaming console which is open for opensource dev, smart move. They’ll be making money and also encourage many independent dev’s, smart. Game consoles are worse than Apple with prisons, this’ll be interesting on how it pans out. Not to mention more studio’s developing on Linux, I’m glad to see it.
This is not a troll question, but why do we need SteamOS? Why didn’t they just port Steam to Android and be done with it? Then the 9,000 Android set-top boxes being released can run Steam games, provided they meet the minimum requirements.
I’m sure there are valid reasons why they didn’t, but this just seems like re-inventing the wheel.
There is no Android-box that would come even close to anything reasonable. And they’re all ARM, not x86.
chromeos would be a far better platform than android…except chromeos is controlled by google and isn’t targeted at performance gaming.
So, why do you think it would be ‘a far better’ choice again?
Edited 2013-09-26 07:32 UTC
When we come here posting at osnews.com, I presume all of us here understand what’s the basic difference between computer architectures. First, Android runs on ARM hardware not x86. Games specifically written for x86 won’t run on Android. Then, the CPU/GPU speeds that high end games badly needed is not at all present in your Android tablet/phone. It cannot even run Starcraft 1. Did anyone manage to run Quake I/II/III in your Android?
We need SteamOS because, as Valve said, SteamOS was designed as a gaming platform for game developers. There are tons of benefits not only for Valve, but the rest of the consumer market.
Actually Android runs on ARM, MIPS or x86. It is pretty much just a VM (Dalvik) running on Linux. “x86” Games would need to be ported to Android anyway since they currently aren’t using the same APIs. And yes you can run Quake I-III on Android https://play.google.com/store/search?q=quake&c=apps. Android uses OpenGL ES which is like a subset of the full OpenGL http://www.khronos.org/opengles/
So, Valve could have used Android its just that the “wheel” is not only invented but more complete on Debian/Ubuntu/SteamOS. Valve probably also wanted more control of the platform not handing some over to Google (yes, they could have forked Android but it is easier to create yet another Linux distro. instead).
There’s no battle for the living room. Lord Gaben will learn this lesson the hard and costly way. The war is raging on phones right now. And tablets pick up the pace real fast.
Trying to feed the Glorious PC Master Race game controllers?
With the exception of a few MMORPG/RTS obsessives, most of the current PC gamers I personally know just connect an XBox controller to their computer & use that with games originally developed for consoles. So they’re essentially only using their PC as souped-up XBox, mostly driven by the fact that graphics capabilities of even mid-range PCs exceed those of the current generation of consoles (as a result of the longer hardware refresh cycle for consoles).
I suspect that’s the demographic Valve is going after here. I’m skeptical of their chances for success (deja-vu flashbacks to the “Phantom” console), but this is probably the best possible time for them to make the attempt: before the next generation of consoles becomes entrenched, and before Microsoft can start adopting Apple-style “software distribution through 1st-party app store only” restrictions on Windows-proper.
Been there, done that, failed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3DO_Interactive_Multiplayer
devices were too expensive, playstation destroyed it.
But at the same time the PC market boomed, especially gaming. 1993-1999 is considered a golden age of PC games.
Perhaps people are failing to see that PC gaming is not the exact same market as console gaming, and when there is overlap, it is exactly that — overlap: both a PC and a console.
What Valve are attempting to do is to prevent the same market stagnation (fear-based publishing) that is choking the current console market.
The publishers have brought this upon themselves by only sponsoring development of Doom and Ultima clones.
Absolutely, but they should be allowed to fail in their own right, without bringing everybody else down too. The publishers control almost everything that gets put onto consoles, blocking any kind of innovation and reinvigoration.
It is Microsoft’s full intention that the PC become like the console (the only place they’re successful right now).
Valve what things to go the other way. The console should become like the PC — flexible, adjustable, open to anybody to rewrite the rules.
It only became like that thanks to the 80’s games crash, which allowed Nintendo to push for the console publishing model that still exists nowadays.
Ultima? You are right on about Doom clones, but I don’t even know when the last traditional c-rpg came out…
Ultima as the precursor of all MMOs that exist nowadays.
Why do people think the console market is stagnating? This year is set to shatter pre-order records for consoles despite two major simultaneous console launches, not to mention the existing Wii U and the upcoming Steam Machines (albeit not strictly a console, but with some audience overlap).
I frequently hear that consoles are dying, yet the excitement for consoles is higher than ever before and console game sales are thriving, particularly with the new thriving indie market.
Perhaps some people overestimate the impact of mobile gaming and fail to understand that mobile gaming, console gaming and PC/KB+M gaming all serve different experiences to different (albeit sometimes overlapping) audience.
Because nothing has changed in the game landscape in the last ~20 years and it’s impossibru to re-vitalize something that failed a long time ago.
I really don’t get all this negativity.
We don’t know the price of the steam machines.
I just hope that by pushing SteamOS and SteamMachines, publishers will finally be more aware about Linux environment and will put more optimizations in the overall integration of their games with Linux system.
It’s not even about the “need” to have ~3 fps more on Linux than Windows.
I’m talking about stuff like proper multihead display support: some games have bogus detection of the current resolution and treat the whole desktop space as one monitor. This results in “playing” the game in resolutions like 4000×1200 — not even close to an acceptable gaming option! I’ve never seen this behavior on Windows.
There are also details like cursor locking in the game window — well, if the game doesn’t cooperate with two monitors, lets put it into a window. But then the mouse cursor isn’t locked inside this window and the pointer slips through window bounds. Tough luck!
Worst part is that these kind of problems are probably very easy to fix. Proper multihead detection is a matter of calling the right APIs (since a ton of other software, like AwesomeWM for example, does this right). Proper cursor locking is a matter of calling the right API to grab the cursor.
But someone has to think about doing it before it’s done. And I hope that by pushing SteamOS more developers will do this kind of thinking
to Steam OS requirements?
That would make sense.
Why not publish a Windows app that will guide, what upgrades given PC should undergo in order to meet SteamOS requirements.
for those of you wondering why Valve is doing this and what is wrong with Windows, here is the answer. Nothing is wrong with Windows today. Valve is doing this so as not to be painted into a corner in the future. Apple is slowly moving to a point where you will have to go through them to get into the OS X of the future. More than likely at a steep price. Microsoft seems to want to follow suit, but has also had moments where they hinted that all gaming was better done on their console. So Valve is building a platform that costs them little and yet gives them full control.
I hope that nVidia’s close cooperation with valve on this project will lead to an Optimus GPU driver that isn’t such a hack like Bumblebee. Bumblebee is better than nothing I suppose but it’s slower than the drivers for Windows and you’re forced to use optirun. A driver that’s completely transparent to the user which doesn’t require optirun and performs as well as the Windows driver would be wonderful.
Optimus (at least until the 600 series of cards) is still comple shit even on Windows. There is still occational locking but the bluescreens and that the automatic switching does not work properly without hick-ups even now after several years. And no, it is not just my systems. The internet is littered with people having problems that kind of things. But also dropping driver development for the 500 series so early on was a dick move.
Hmmm…I haven’t had the problems you’re experiencing. I have a Toshiba Qosmio X870 which has a GTX 670M Optimus GPU paired with an Intel HD4000 and it works great. One thing I did notice was that some 3D intensive programs still wanted to use the HD4000 instead of the 670M. So under the Nvidia control panel I just set things up so that the 670M does all the work. Uses more power but I’m more concerned with performance than with power savings.
Valve selling pre-built small footprint pcs with the steamos linux distro pre-installed… Groundbreaking…
* Die hard PC gamers, build their own rigs.
* Console gamers typically buy consoles.
* Normal people buy a console.
Edited 2013-09-26 19:53 UTC
In the late 90s, I am a die-hard PC gamer, but because of work, I’ve not even touch a single game for almost a decade save a few 2D games. But the way I see console gaming against P.C. gaming, P.C. gaming is the best experience and you have the best game available. You can fine-tune your game to used whatever CPU/GPU speed you have in your computer.
I never understood why all of these games that are cross-platform can only be played online with people with the same platform.
All they need to do is detect keyboard/mouse and create separate games for those people so they don’t have the advantage.
I’d really like to play Battlefield 3 on my PS3 but I’d want to use a keyboard/mouse. They should let me use one and only play against others with a keyboard / mouse whether its on an xbox, ps3, or PC.
I think there are technical barriers, I think game developers knew this. However, console manufacturers love this for you to buy their console. That is why P.C. based-games is always the best for gamers.
Although it seems a nice offer from steam, it’s a bit naive. Playstation and Xbox are the trademarks of console gaming. If you want easy to set up gaming machine – these two, if you want play advanced games or need more performance – PC. Now these Steam Machines are just another PC with Steam client. Maybe they also will be used as multimedia devices, but the popularity of these are dropping. So IMHo there are no target group for this device.
You think the popularity of media devices, an htpc in this case, is dropping? Wrong. The demand for small, quiet, low power htpcs is higher than ever and why you’re seeing more & more htpc features integrated into tvs, etc.
However, while the idea of having a full htpc/gaming system in one looks good on paper, it’s a product consumers simply haven’t asked for and don’t seem to want. That’s what these companies don’t get. If they wanted an all-in-one system, they would already be using one because the capability has been there for quite some time. Media consumers and gamers are in fact two different & distinct groups. Yes, there is some overlap, but these companies seem like they view them as a single massive group. They’re trying to bridge a gap that isn’t there for most people. You’re not going to sell millions of devices when people just aren’t that interested.