Valve Software head Gabe Newell gave a presentation at a recent LinuxCon event in New Orleans, talking up the Steam platform creator's commitment to the open OS environment, and going so far as to explain that the company has determined that "Linux really is the future for gaming" (thanks
Ars Technica).
Key points made by Newell were that they see fragmentation between different physical computing -- mobile, living room, and desktop -- as being "undesirable and unnecessary". "As a user, I shouldn't have to buy new games, have new friends, or like different movies or music just because I'm sitting on a couch" Gabe said, before describing their work on Steam's 'Big Picture' mode, then reiterating that "work on the hardware side" was the next step.
It's been many months since we heard any news on Valve's hardware aspirations, which seem to be much broader than just the "Steam Box" concept of compact living-room PCs but Newell suggested we won't have to wait much longer to find out more, saying "Next week we’re going to be rolling out more information about how we get there and what are the hardware opportunities that we see for bringing Linux into the living room and potentially pointing further down the road to how we can get it even more unified with mobile."
Youtube user Micah John thoughtfully captured Newell's LinuxCon presentation, which you can watch in full below if you're so inclined.
Posted 10:47am 17/9/13
Posted 10:49am 17/9/13
Posted 10:49am 17/9/13
Posted 10:54am 17/9/13
maybe Valve should focus less on worrying about "fragmentation" and more on not charging 90 f**** dollars for digital copy of a game..
Posted 11:06am 17/9/13
Posted 12:45pm 17/9/13
Posted 01:24pm 17/9/13
Posted 01:50pm 17/9/13
It would be cool if it was a cheaper version of Nvidia Shield without screen or controller (similar to PS Vita TV) running on Linux. Support for the lower end linux games but can stream your PC over local network.
Posted 02:21pm 17/9/13
Posted 02:23pm 17/9/13
Posted 02:42pm 17/9/13
So many companies gain their riches by devising exactly what the market wants and delivering it just right. Then they think they can dictate to the market and wonder why they aren't the powerhouse of their field anymore.
Posted 03:06pm 17/9/13
I mean, I wonder what GPU they'll be putting in their steam boxes.
Posted 03:31pm 17/9/13
Posted 04:10pm 17/9/13
Devices which could be preconfigured from someone like Dell/Alienware with a gaming oriented, hi performance linux distro for end users, with the option to buy MS Windows and dual boot or something to capture extra market share.
Posted 05:36pm 17/9/13
Posted 05:42pm 17/9/13
As soon as nVidia and AMD release decent drivers for their graphics hardware... and people actually start using it.
For now, let's just keep using Windows, okay? It's worked for 19 years, there's little reason to change now.
Posted 05:57pm 17/9/13
Posted 08:50pm 17/9/13
Maybe it'd simply because of Gabe's links to Microsoft corporate and his strategic agreements with game dev studio management.
That's what I'd do to make sure I held a monopoly on distribution/validation so the revenue streams are given to the developers and designers and not taken advantage of by any incumbent administration/management
Anyway it's just a server side Framework for code validation, a lot like the other identity validation services like MS's passport.net or that Google offer
In gaming at least, hardware is necessary and all that jazz but the waves of content those studios produce is what generates the cashflow further along the tail into the retail supply chain
Posted 09:03pm 17/9/13
QFT.
Posted 07:14am 18/9/13
Origin is probably the only thing that comes close to being as good, even then it's subject to the archaic pricing of EA. UPlay and GFWL are both complete turds.
Posted 09:24am 18/9/13
Posted 09:19pm 19/9/13
I think you meant XBox tech there
youngolder Padawan // yeah before anyone jumps in - I am taking the piss here;)
Trog, you're not allowed to pull code apart - you are supposed to stick to marketing/management duties.
last edited by koopz at 21:19:33 19/Sep/13
Posted 12:20am 20/9/13
And that's a good thing, given how much more open and customisable linux is, even to noobs.
Posted 12:31pm 20/9/13
Windows 8 + Office 2013 really adds to the pain.
Posted 03:13pm 21/9/13
very few people are going to go to the effort of jumping into the bios to turn that s*** on.
pay attention Gigabyte
Posted 06:25pm 21/9/13
I wonder if the move to Linux isn't so much about moving entirely to the Linux platform, but rather a method of keeping Microsoft honest because of the very threat of there being a (hopefully viable) alternative.
I also wonder how many games devs will champion the cause and spend time ensuring their games run on linux. Without that buy-in they won't go far.
Posted 06:35pm 21/9/13
Posted 07:09pm 21/9/13
Devs don't even bother with the current options available, e.g. GTA5 devs didnt even bother with a PC version.. why would this change in the case of linux?
Posted 10:06pm 21/9/13