Post by Dan @ 07:53am 24/09/13 | 31 Comments
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.Additionally, Valve has detailed some new key features accompanying the announcement, that will be integral to SteamOS, but also offered to the traditional Windows/Mac/Linux Steam Client: In-home Streaming, Family Sharing, Family Options, and Music, TV, and Movies:
In-home StreamingBold moves from PC gaming's favourite fellows, and two more announcements still to come this week.
You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have - then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV!
Music, TV, Movies
We’re working with many of the media services you know and love. Soon we will begin bringing them online, allowing you to access your favorite music and video with Steam and SteamOS.
Family Sharing
In the past, sharing Steam games with your family members was hard. Now you can share the games you love with the people you love. Family Sharing allows you to take turns playing one another’s games while earning your own Steam achievements and saving your individual game progress to the Steam cloud.
Family Options
The living-room is family territory. That’s great, but you don’t want to see your parents’ games in your library. Soon, families will have more control over what titles get seen by whom, and more features to allow everyone in the house to get the most out of their Steam libraries.
Swing by store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/ for more details.
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Posted 08:07am 24/9/13
Posted 08:12am 24/9/13
Posted 08:13am 24/9/13
also this sounds like they couldn't get Ubuntu to do what they wanted so they bastardized their own version..
Posted 08:18am 24/9/13
Posted 08:20am 24/9/13
Seems obvious that the main reasons they wouldn't want to keep using Ubuntu is to be able to more holistically tailor the entire experience to Steam users.
Also, this:
Posted 08:21am 24/9/13
Posted 08:49am 24/9/13
Posted 08:59am 24/9/13
Posted 09:24am 24/9/13
Of course you could also just buy one of those Belkin HDMI streamers but I'm hoping the SteamOS will have some decent control options that simplify interaction while using it on the TV and also allow peripherals to be plugged in and utilised.
Posted 09:27am 24/9/13
Posted 09:47am 24/9/13
Posted 09:48am 24/9/13
Posted 10:16am 24/9/13
I doubt it'll be that level of impact, that it'll probably make a dent. I can see it appealing to the PC savvy gamers who might pick this up instead of a console, but to a dedicated console gamer I can't see it swaying them. At the end of the day its still a PC, still needs driver updates, still needs hardware upgrades, still gotta fiddle with complex graphics settings, etc to get best performance/quality. To your average Call of Duty playing console frat boy who knows nothing about PCs, thats not going to be an experience they want.
I'd definitely grab one though, even if its just to stream games from my PC to my tv and play PC quality games with a console-like experience.
Posted 10:25am 24/9/13
On Basic mode, it acts just like a console. When you buy the certified SteamOS hardware, it will be at certain level of performance and specs just like a console. Every game released on steam would require a mandatory recommend system that specifies which hardware level it needs (SteamOS 1, SteamOS 2) something like that. Of course that means that Valve can only release a certified system every couple of years to keep it simple.
Advanced mode would open the OS up to the level PC gamers expect, allowing upgrades, and the rest.
I wouldn't write off the frat boy users just yet, I would think that valve what to get their hands into that cake too as such they will try to make the system as usable for the frat boys as much as they can. Perhaps not straight away, they'll be working on it for sure.
Posted 10:26am 24/9/13
Posted 10:32am 24/9/13
wow, it's not often you read these sort of responses on this forum :) it's refreshing!
Posted 10:33am 24/9/13
If corps like Dell, HP, Acer et all start making nice little compact systems to SteamOS spec, they could very easily be as luddite-friendly as a console.
Most interesting is that where current PC specs are versus the upcoming new console generation. When the Xbox 360 was launching, it had a ATI GPU that was at the cutting edge of PC GPUs of the day. Whereas both PS4 and XBO are already behind in that metric today. PCs will likely be outperforming consoles at reasonable price-points a lot faster than they did last generation. Then there's the fact that all next gen console games are x86, so easier to port across all three this time.
The market is ripe for SteamOS.
Posted 10:35am 24/9/13
also, what do i need to do (call my banks and creditors?) when i think my wallet has gone walkies possibly stolen by someone? i was just about to duck out to the shops to grab a dvd and put a deposit on a Ferrari ;p
Posted 10:41am 24/9/13
Posted 11:04am 24/9/13
There is also the problem where they don't support a large number of PC games because they allow DLC and such to be sold through the game client or publisher based stores like EA content and many MMO's.
Similar to above really, MS and Sony can bargain with chip manufactures to get very good prices, they can also subsidize the cost of the hardware through software sales which I don't think Steam will be in a position to do.
My guess is that unless nvidia do some kind of deal with Valve we will see very similar components in the official Steam box to what is on offer in consoles, ie low end, cost effective AMD cards and possibly even AMD CPU's.
Posted 11:27am 24/9/13
It's possible that the "hardware" Valve has been hinting at might be limited to peripherals -- biometric devices, controllers or some kind of custom keyboard tailored to using the web and playing games in the living room -- these are all things that Valve has been known to be tinkering with.
Or they could just be doing the dongle thing, with something the size of Google's Chromecast that's the size of a USB stick, plugs directly into a HDMI port, and can handle the SteamOS video-streaming features from a user's main gaming PC to their living room TV.
The idea that they have actual "Steam Box" complete PCs in the works, has actually come out of speculation and conjecture from only a handful of reports. It's still a definite possibility, but I still have my doubts.
It's actually impressive how secret they had managed to keep the SteamOS announcement.
Posted 11:35am 24/9/13
I have a number of s***** PC ports of otherwise good games that play well in console setting but getting signal from my PC to the TV and controls etc is always just a huge pain in the arse, and 2 gaming PCs is too expensive.
PC f***en master race, all the way to the lounge room unfunfunf
Posted 12:03pm 24/9/13
That's where the business is at. They are releasing it to manufacturers for free. That is huge. It is one of the major contributing of how android came to dominate the phone market. Steam may release their own hardware, as Google does, but more to the point you can have all the major PC manufacturers getting in on the party. Particularly as many of those companies are starting to become pissed with Microsoft. 'Alienware steambox','Asus Steambox' hell an 'Oculus Sixsense Steambox'. It's just a matter of these companies putting together a living-room friendly box at a competitive price.
If this 'console generation' lasts as long as the previous, I will have a steam box that blitzes the consoles from Sony and Microsoft. It's all win for us and Valve. Yay the future!
Posted 12:28pm 24/9/13
Unless the XBone fails spectacularly I'm not imagining a s***load of uptake for native Steam on Linux, its far too easy to port xbox DX to Windows to add PC+Steam to the supported platform list ... that will also seemingly happily stream to a wimpy lounge room install. Assuming the streaming works well, this could actually be good news for MS lol.
I can see lots of PC people buying (or using their existing) cheapy HTPC to play games on, especially if you can whack XBMC / Plex on it too. Buying dedicated gaming hardware for it is another matter ... its a long, long road to a significant install base of gaming-capable Steam for Linux platforms.
Posted 02:01pm 24/9/13
..oh :\
Posted 02:04pm 24/9/13
Posted 02:16pm 24/9/13
Posted 02:22pm 24/9/13
Posted 02:25pm 24/9/13
Posted 02:31pm 24/9/13
Also I found this comment on the new announcement and pretty much agree with it, especially Valve being one of the few that can somewhat shift the market.
Posted 02:44pm 24/9/13
think about the games you often see on the sales, there is a really broad age group that they are aimed at, and how most people upgrade their PC's
get your 2-6 years out of a PC gaming rig, that rig get handed off to your partner or becomes a media machine
now those games can be enjoyed with-out having to buy a console version and a PC version,
can now be enjoyed without forking out for a big powerful gaming rig for you, your partner or the many kids you may have
i see this as a great way that valve is keeping our costs down, while still letting us enjoy as many games as we can
I really hope that EA come back to the party after the poor money grabbing attempt that was origin, (i've not reinstalled origin, and will unlikely until there are some major changes, it was s*****, worked poorly imo, and really missed the point (it was clear that it was more about looking after EA, than looking out for us)