Topic: Valve announces SteamOS

[shingi_70]

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

Steam is coming to a new operating system

As we’ve been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we’ve come to the conclusion that the
 environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself.
 SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen.
 It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.

Living room & Steam

Finally, you don’t have to give up your favorite games, your online friends, and all the Steam features you love just to play on the big screen. SteamOS, running on any living room machine, will provide access to the best games and user-generated content available.

Fast forward

In SteamOS, we have achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing, and we’re now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level. Game developers are already taking advantage of these gains as they target SteamOS for their new releases.

Cooperating system

Steam is not a one-way content broadcast channel, it’s a collaborative many-to-many entertainment platform, in which each participant is a multiplier of the experience for everyone else. With SteamOS, “openness” means that the hardware industry can iterate in the living room at a much faster pace than they’ve been able to. Content creators can connect directly to their customers. Users can alter or replace any part of the software or hardware they want. Gamers are empowered to join in the creation of the games they love. SteamOS will continue to evolve, but will remain an environment designed to foster these kinds of innovation.

Sound Nice. Might just be the next gen console to beat.

[BranDonk Kong]

Except it's not a console...

[shingi_70]

Except it's not a console...

You really doubt that Steambox doesn't exist at this point. C'mon Man.

[ShyGuy]

I am interested. I hope this brings more PC games to Linux.

[shingi_70]

I am interested. I hope this brings more PC games to Linux.

It will this is probably Valve's one and only chance to draw the line and get PC gaming into Linux before Microsoft kills the desktop as we know it.

[Spak-Spang]

Actually, if Valve makes a console unit, or a dedicated TV CPU or as they call it the living room machine, they are following a good strategy.  It is a similar strategy to what Apple did to open the market for tablet computers.  They used another device (iphone) to build up enough apps and support for their OS and system before releasing non-phone unit to the market.  The smart phone was an important aspect to get early adopters.  People wanted to have a true smart phone computer. 

Now Valve realizes many people already have a PC and are willing to use the PC as their gaming machine.  They have been slowly but surely making the PC capable of being a console with its Steam library, online infrastructure and now getting console like games and indie games to the market at close to the same time as consoles. 

Valve has put themselves in a position to enter into the market with little risk.  They don't need to even focus on the hardware, because they already have an established user base.  Any hardware they create will just be to simplify the process for the general market. 

Truly we are seeing a position where a viable company is trying to merge the computer and console gaming markets into one entity.  This will have a bigger and bolder impact on the future of the industry than the Ouya ever dreamed of...and it is has the potential to do the exact same thing.  Open up the TV (Big Screen) casual market to truly be more independent from a more closed big 3 market standard. 

[shingi_70]

Actually, if Valve makes a console unit, or a dedicated TV CPU or as they call it the living room machine, they are following a good strategy.  It is a similar strategy to what Apple did to open the market for tablet computers.  They used another device (iphone) to build up enough apps and support for their OS and system before releasing non-phone unit to the market.  The smart phone was an important aspect to get early adopters.  People wanted to have a true smart phone computer. 

Now Valve realizes many people already have a PC and are willing to use the PC as their gaming machine.  They have been slowly but surely making the PC capable of being a console with its Steam library, online infrastructure and now getting console like games and indie games to the market at close to the same time as consoles. 

Valve has put themselves in a position to enter into the market with little risk.  They don't need to even focus on the hardware, because they already have an established user base.  Any hardware they create will just be to simplify the process for the general market. 

Truly we are seeing a position where a viable company is trying to merge the computer and console gaming markets into one entity.  This will have a bigger and bolder impact on the future of the industry than the Ouya ever dreamed of...and it is has the potential to do the exact same thing.  Open up the TV (Big Screen) casual market to truly be more independent from a more closed big 3 market standard.

Problem is does the General Market care and what can Valve do to convince people to go with Steambox. For the regular Steam user this means nothing as a few will transition to Steam OS while others will stay on Windows with the bulk of the systems games.

The biggest problem I see with the Steambox is that it isn't a closed system and most importantly I'm not sure Valve has compelling exclusives.

[NWR_insanolord]

You don't think Valve, one of the most beloved PC developers, has compelling exclusives? They have the nuclear option in their back pocket: Half Life 3, exclusive to Steam OS. I'm not saying they'd go that far, but if they wanted strong exclusives they could certainly have them.

[shingi_70]

You don't think Valve, one of the most beloved PC developers, has compelling exclusives? They have the nuclear option in their back pocket: Half Life 3, exclusive to Steam OS. I'm not saying they'd go that far, but if they wanted strong exclusives they could certainly have them.

No I don't. They really haven't shown anything that makes me believe they have any First Party games ready. Their pretty public split between the left 4 dead guys shows me that.

Half Life
Counter Strike
Portal
Alien Swarm
Left 4 Dead
Dota 2

Don't get me wrong Valve could have a ton of secret projects in the works to launch with Steambox but I'm not utterly convinced. I do agree that Half Life 3 is the nuclear Option but even than that doesn't make it exclusive to Steambox or SteamOS.

[azeke]

Valve was amazing.

Team Fortress 2 is by far my favourite online shooter. What an amazing game. I bought Orange Box in 2008 and it was gift that kept on giving for years and years and years.

Half-Life 2 and its episodes, Portal and Portal 2 are all amazing games.

But... Last two-three years i found myself almost completely detached from what they're doing as a game developer. L4D2?.. Eh. Dota2? Tried to get into it many times, never could.

Of course the stuff they do with Steam is still great and i love Big Picture Mode (major gamechanger i think), but even Steam isn't perfect.

HL3... I don't think i really care at that point, really. In fact i'd be more excited about Portal 3 at that point.

For such an important developer their output is sure ludicrously small. I constantly keep asking myself what the hell they're doing in there and honestly i'm out of any plausible answers. They even stopped making new hats and weapons for TF2 -- that was relegated to fans.

[MukiDA]

So here's what's to be excited about for SteamOS.


1. It's game streaming by a company that knows and cares about video games.

Nearly everything that currently sucks about streaming games from your PC to another device is potentially solved by this endeavour. Right now the "brute force" method (which is what companies like Splashtop do) is the only real option we have for PC game streaming: Run a game and copy the framebuffer to RAM, and then have the CPU encode it into video and bounce it across the network. It's a sloppy, clumsy method, and introduces a clearly noticeable delay. It's also usually implemented by people who don't really care about things like latency, framerates, resolutions and image quality. The Wii U/PS4->Vita this is NOT.

The only exception right now is Nvidia's Shield streaming, and aside from being limited to one hardware vendor's PC config, it's also very clearly in BETA. (Shield owner speaking).

What I'm hoping is that Valve takes full advantage of existing dedicated video encoding in Intel (Sand Bridge+), Nvidia (Geforce GTX 600+), and AMD (Radeon HD 7000+) graphics chips, and give us a universal API for streaming to a device using SteamOS with minimal latency and at 60hz when possible. For anyone who's played Off-TV games on the Wii U, this is quite immediately an exciting prospect. Even if they average 2-3 frames latency (vs Wii U's ~1), this would be awesome to have access to.


2. Linux desktop users (both of them)should cheer, because they have Valve in their corner now. The grand majority of optimizations, support, and conformance across hardware vendors will do nothing but improve the desktop Linux experience.  Even if their work begins and ends at Big Picture mode, much like for point #1, we benefit from both Nvidia and AMD being forced to offer more than haphazard game support.

[size=78%]3. Devices. Make no bones about it, this is Valve's end game. We are clearly going to have two classes of "Steam Box". The full-on desktop monster running Windows, and the companion/open box running SteamOS. For people who already have next-gen PC powerhouses, having a cheap way to run some games natively and stream the rest will be priceless. We'll see everything from beasts that can run the latest and greatest to tiny Kabini/Bay Trail-equipped $99-199 boxes meant mostly to Stream from beefier machines.[/size]

Bonus: ARM support? I'd love to see Valve make some attempt to keep a partial source of published Linux games on the Steam store to implement ARM builds across titles. A portable or tiny TV (maybe even HDMI plug ala Gamestick and ChromeCast?) SteamOS machine would be amazing. The NVidia Shield's GPU is already 3 times more powerful than the original Xbox; wouldn't it be nice to try the original HL2 or Portal on the go? =)

[ShyGuy]

Steam Machines!

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/

Beginning in 2014, there will be multiple SteamOS machines to choose from, made by different manufacturers.

[Ceric]

You don't think Valve, one of the most beloved PC developers, has compelling exclusives? They have the nuclear option in their back pocket: Half Life 3, exclusive to Steam OS. I'm not saying they'd go that far, but if they wanted strong exclusives they could certainly have them.

Someone doesn't remember the Launch of Steam and Half Life 2.  They so would make Half Life 3 initially exclusive to SteamOS.

[shingi_70]

Steam Machines!

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/

Beginning in 2014, there will be multiple SteamOS machines to choose from, made by different manufacturers.

Someone play Human After All.

[azeke]

Someone doesn't remember the Launch of Steam and Half Life 2.  They so would make Half Life 3 initially exclusive to SteamOS.

Do-ho-ho, oh i remember. I remember it well.
It was the biggest shitstorm and clusterfuck i've ever seen. Nothing worked in the first days, Steam was so **** to use back then.
The first singleplayer game that required online, too.

[BranDonk Kong]

Yeah, but they've certainly gotten their **** together since then. You can't even mention PC gaming without Steam anymore. I would probably buy a Steambox, and probably get rid of all my consoles too...as long as GTAV gets released on SteamOS (Linux).

[BlackNMild2k1]

I think one of SteamOS's ace in the holes as far as exclusives go are the SALES!!!

Indie games $1 each
Collection Games $60 for the 12 game catalog w/ expansions
New releases 25% off!!!
etc etc

and then Valve exclusives ontop of that. along with most every other game, including some MS "console exlusives" like Halo and things of that sort.

what's not to like about a SteamBox!?

[ShyGuy]

I think I will start calling it SteaMachee. STEE-MAH-CHEE!

Body Massage!

Dey-Took-our-Jerbs!

[NWR_insanolord]

The key to this will be how many developers take the time to port their games to Steam OS. It might be one of those "won't get support until there's an install base but won't get an install base until there's support" kind of things. I think Valve could pull it off, but it won't be easy.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Steam Machines!

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/

Beginning in 2014, there will be multiple SteamOS machines to choose from, made by different manufacturers.

Personally, I think this is Nintendo's chance to reinvent the Wii U into the machine we always wanted it to be. Nintendo games with a Steam Online experience and feature set.
if they can weave the Nintendo experience onto the SteamOS UI I think we can turn things around.

It would be Nintendo's Trojan Horse into instant 3rd Party support but with exclusives you can only play on the Nintendo Wii U w/ SteamOS inside ®. I feel like this could be Nintendo's instant win button .

[shingi_70]

While I'm still skeptical about this I can see how it could take a piece of the the console market. I do think opening up the Platform to multiple hardware makers could be a mistake on the hardware side of things.

[Ceric]

I would not be surprised that in Conjunction to SteamOS that Valve has been working to wrap all the Windows API calls, probably starting with WINE and going from their, so that a Windows game will just sort of Run on Steam OS.

[shingi_70]

Not sure that's happening so soon. There's a reason why Valve is pushing the streaming feature as a big deal of steambox.

[pokepal148]

I would not be surprised that in Conjunction to SteamOS that Valve has been working to wrap all the Windows API calls, probably starting with WINE and going from their, so that a Windows game will just sort of Run on Steam OS.

I know there's something like that for macs and so I assume there's most likely something for Linux as well. Valve already has something of a starting point.

[azeke]

I would not be surprised that in Conjunction to SteamOS that Valve has been working to wrap all the Windows API calls, probably starting with WINE and going from their, so that a Windows game will just sort of Run on Steam OS.

It's honestly easier to just rewrite games than trying to replicate all quirks of WinAPI. And WinAPI isn't even the biggest hurdle there actually. The biggest problem are drivers.