Steam Box Catch-All

Ok, so no one is talking about Big Picture? the Steam overlay that let you play on a flat screen like your PC was a console?

http://store.steampowered.com/news/8...

http://store.steampowered.com/bigpic...

No, we all missed it. Good catch. Looks interesting, I'll have to try it.

Scratched wrote:

No, we all missed it. Good catch. Looks interesting, I'll have to try it.

Well, I suppose nowaday it's easy to do. Almost all new video card got an HDMI output (If not all new cards).

Keep me inform, I have been toying with that kind of setting in a near future.

There's some talk about this on the Gabe Newell thread- whatever silly title that one holds.

hum, ok, where can i post this?

I just realise, they are letting select the HDD you want to install it now! (I got 3 HDD).

Just click install, and you can select where to.

Was that part of the Big Picture update?

(That was working with FTL).

EDIT : Worked with Tropico 4 as well, tried others indie game, and didn't work.

Input device in beta at valve :

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/09/19/fi...

So, they are doing parts of a console?

Manach wrote:

Input device in beta at valve :

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/09/19/fi...

So, they are doing parts of a console?

A really awesome lap keyboard/mouse device would be awesome.. Right now I don't really game from the couch on a PC unless its a 360 controller enabled game.

It's pantomime season.

Oh it is (via The Verge)

according to Valve boss Gabe Newell, you'll be able to buy a living-room-friendly PC package next year.

At this point I think I need to remind people of the perils of valve mentioning a time scale - https://developer.valvesoftware.com/...

Well, I think I have some words to eat. See ya later.

Scratched wrote:

It's pantomime season.

Oh it is (via The Verge)

according to Valve boss Gabe Newell, you'll be able to buy a living-room-friendly PC package next year.

At this point I think I need to remind people of the perils of valve mentioning a time scale - https://developer.valvesoftware.com/...

Not from Valve, though. It sounds like it's going to be a Dell or Asus box that's preconfigured with Steam. It'll be more like the Android ecosystem than the current consoles. Honestly, given that almost all new TV's ship with DVI ports, and most mid-range and above video cards have HDMI out, I'm surprised it's taken this long for any of the big PC manufacturers to bother with producing living room boxes.

More importantly, because Valve isn't the ones directly making them, they'll be out next year. Hopefully Valve time won't hit with the peripherals actually needed to play the games....

cube wrote:
Scratched wrote:

It's pantomime season.

Oh it is (via The Verge)

according to Valve boss Gabe Newell, you'll be able to buy a living-room-friendly PC package next year.

At this point I think I need to remind people of the perils of valve mentioning a time scale - https://developer.valvesoftware.com/...

Not from Valve, though. It sounds like it's going to be a Dell or Asus box that's preconfigured with Steam. It'll be more like the Android ecosystem than the current consoles. Honestly, given that almost all new TV's ship with DVI ports, and most mid-range and above video cards have HDMI out, I'm surprised it's taken this long for any of the big PC manufacturers to bother with producing living room boxes.

More importantly, because Valve isn't the ones directly making them, they'll be out next year. Hopefully Valve time won't hit with the peripherals actually needed to play the games....

Well, a Steam Box, from Dell, is already possible from Dell.ca. Dell already come with Steam pre-install.

We will see I guess.

cube wrote:
Scratched wrote:

It's pantomime season.

Oh it is (via The Verge)

according to Valve boss Gabe Newell, you'll be able to buy a living-room-friendly PC package next year.

At this point I think I need to remind people of the perils of valve mentioning a time scale - https://developer.valvesoftware.com/...

Not from Valve, though. It sounds like it's going to be a Dell or Asus box that's preconfigured with Steam. It'll be more like the Android ecosystem than the current consoles. Honestly, given that almost all new TV's ship with DVI ports, and most mid-range and above video cards have HDMI out, I'm surprised it's taken this long for any of the big PC manufacturers to bother with producing living room boxes.

More importantly, because Valve isn't the ones directly making them, they'll be out next year. Hopefully Valve time won't hit with the peripherals actually needed to play the games....

Newell said he's expecting a lot of different companies to release these types of packages—"We'll do it but we also think other people will as well," he told me—and that Valve's hardware might not be as open-source or as malleable as your average computer

Both, it looks like.

I think myself and other people were saying this was pretty inevitable although it didn't sound like Valve was all that interested in making the hardware. Still sounds that way, I could see them making a reference model similar to how AMD and NVidia provide reference designs for their GPUs which are then tweaked by the various manufacturers.

cube wrote:

Not from Valve, though. It sounds like it's going to be a Dell or Asus box that's preconfigured with Steam. It'll be more like the Android ecosystem than the current consoles. Honestly, given that almost all new TV's ship with DVI ports, and most mid-range and above video cards have HDMI out, I'm surprised it's taken this long for any of the big PC manufacturers to bother with producing living room boxes.

Well Apple makes the Mac Mini. I'd be surprised if that couldn't be hooked up to a TV with minimal effort. Micro ATX form factors have been popular in the enthusiast circles for a while, outfits like Dell and HP should be exploring that space by now. Actually, wasn't Alienware (a Dell subsidiary) starting to push out some living room PCs this year people were expecting to be trojan horses for a "Steam box"?

More importantly, because Valve isn't the ones directly making them, they'll be out next year. Hopefully Valve time won't hit with the peripherals actually needed to play the games....

I haven't checked Tech Report or Anandtech, but the RPS guy is saying Intel's Haswell chips are going to noticeably improve the integrated GPU. I think last year (or earlier this year) Valve was doing some work on optimizing Portal 2 for Intel Graphics. So my guess is around the time of Haswell's release (this spring?) these will come to market.

As for peripherals... simple. Big Picture supports any controller that uses XInput, and specifically references the wired 360 controller and Logitech's 710 and 510 controllers. Cut a deal with Logitech or MS, done.

shoptroll wrote:

As for peripherals... simple. Big Picture supports any controller that uses XInput, and specifically references the wired 360 controller and Logitech's 710 and 510 controllers. Cut a deal with Logitech or MS, done.

While I'm sure there are others, those are the only XInput controllers I've ever known about. Which is a good thing, to be honest. Keep it simple.

SixteenBlue wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

As for peripherals... simple. Big Picture supports any controller that uses XInput, and specifically references the wired 360 controller and Logitech's 710 and 510 controllers. Cut a deal with Logitech or MS, done.

While I'm sure there are others, those are the only XInput controllers I've ever known about. Which is a good thing, to be honest. Keep it simple.

It should also be reasonably simple (™) to configure anything that's not exactly right, assuming it doesn't need extra drivers, with a "press the button for X" and "move the left stick down" setup.

For a 'turnkey' solution, then standard (360) controllers have been recommended for gamepad PC games for ages anyway, but if it's allows tinkering by not being locked down (you can get access to the underlying OS, whatever it is) then I could see a 3rd party doing that if Valve don't cook it into steam, I'm thinking of a friendlier version of X360CE (which pretty much autoconfigures already).

SixteenBlue wrote:

While I'm sure there are others, those are the only XInput controllers I've ever known about. Which is a good thing, to be honest. Keep it simple.

I think all the major players in the controller space bailed out when XInput hit and PC gaming "died", and I think the only games which don't also support DirectInput are the ones running XNA.

Also, the 310 is the wired counterpart to the 710, my bad.

EDIT: I think there's one issue people are forgetting about with hypothetical "Steam box": Pricing. Processing-wise, this will likely go head-to-head against the upcoming consoles. Unfortunately for Valve & their OEM partners, MS and Sony can and will subsidize their consoles in any way they can to compete on price. A $300-400 PC isn't exactly a pretty little thing, and there's likely very small margins on such a box. Valve might be financially sound enough that they could subsidize the boxes and make back the money through Steam profits, but that seems like a huge risk to me. Although, I think that wouldn't be unheard of, aren't most "crapware" placed on OEM PCs through arrangements like that?

Scratched wrote:

For a 'turnkey' solution, then standard (360) controllers have been recommended for gamepad PC games for ages anyway, but if it's allows tinkering by not being locked down (you can get access to the underlying OS, whatever it is) then I could see a 3rd party doing that if Valve don't cook it into steam, I'm thinking of a friendlier version of X360CE (which pretty much autoconfigures already).

Your friendlier version of 360CE I believe is basically the Logitech controllers I mentioned above. They have a switch (can't remember if it's physical or software) that toggles them between DirectInput and XInput mode.

shoptroll wrote:
Scratched wrote:

For a 'turnkey' solution, then standard (360) controllers have been recommended for gamepad PC games for ages anyway, but if it's allows tinkering by not being locked down (you can get access to the underlying OS, whatever it is) then I could see a 3rd party doing that if Valve don't cook it into steam, I'm thinking of a friendlier version of X360CE (which pretty much autoconfigures already).

Your friendlier version of 360CE I believe is basically the Logitech controllers I mentioned above. They have a switch (can't remember if it's physical or software) that toggles them between DirectInput and XInput mode.

Physical, at least on my 510. Great controller.

SixteenBlue wrote:

Physical, at least on my 510. Great controller.

I'm hoping to get a pair of 710s to replace my Wireless Rumblepads this Xmas. I'm tired of forgetting to start 360CE

How open will the Steam Box be? It could be a great value if you can also dual boot this thing into a clean Ubuntu or Windows 7 install and use it as a desktop computer as well. If that's the case, I could pass on upgrading my desktop for the foreseeable future.

shoptroll wrote:

I haven't checked Tech Report or Anandtech, but the RPS guy is saying Intel's Haswell chips are going to noticeably improve the integrated GPU. I think last year (or earlier this year) Valve was doing some work on optimizing Portal 2 for Intel Graphics. So my guess is around the time of Haswell's release (this spring?) these will come to market.

The unfortunate part is that since we're talking the PC gamer space, these aren't going to be marketed as consumer electronics. They're going to be for the enthusiast, which means they're going to NEED to look better than what the 360 or PS3 are providing. Valve can pull it off with their games, mostly because Source is really starting to show it's age. But for games that are using UE3 or CryEngine 3, it will leave a lot to be desired.

I'm honestly skeptical that Intel will ever manage to get their graphics solution up to anywhere near the standard that ATI/AMD or NVidia are at. The problem isn't the chip(though it's probably a good thing to have hardware video rendering), it's the RAM bandwidth. So the problem is really more motherboard design than chip, because, ideally, you'll want your graphics chip to have it's own dedicated RAM bus. Neither Haswell, nor AMD's Fusion architecture are really up to the task, since it just pushes the choke point to RAM rather than the processor. Keep in mind, these solutions are perfect for mobile tablets, because they're significantly lower power(you're not powering 2x RAM, fans, etc.), but you do take an overall hit in performance.

cube wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

I haven't checked Tech Report or Anandtech, but the RPS guy is saying Intel's Haswell chips are going to noticeably improve the integrated GPU. I think last year (or earlier this year) Valve was doing some work on optimizing Portal 2 for Intel Graphics. So my guess is around the time of Haswell's release (this spring?) these will come to market.

The unfortunate part is that since we're talking the PC gamer space, these aren't going to be marketed as consumer electronics. They're going to be for the enthusiast, which means they're going to NEED to look better than what the 360 or PS3 are providing. Valve can pull it off with their games, mostly because Source is really starting to show it's age. But for games that are using UE3 or CryEngine 3, it will leave a lot to be desired.

Hmmm, I'd say it depends. One of the strengths of the PC is that it can take a lot of shapes, and especially with the back catalogue, valve have some loose 'certification' of controller/big picture friendly games, they could do 'tiers' of hardware capabilities and clearly label it in the store (or put a warning up if you try and run it on lower tier hardware).

You could get a ton of gaming out of a cheap little box with that. It all depends on what area of gaming you're into, but there's a big range.

hannibals wrote:

How open will the Steam Box be? It could be a great value if you can also dual boot this thing into a clean Ubuntu or Windows 7 install and use it as a desktop computer as well. If that's the case, I could pass on upgrading my desktop for the foreseeable future.

Eh, don't make plans around it yet.

But also, according to Gabe it might not be as open as a normal PC, so take that into consideration too.

When it comes in at close to a grand, it will be dead on arrival.

From what I'm reading in that Verge article, Valve appears to want to put a tight console/iOS/Windows Store like leash on this ecosystem that will run on their Steam box. In other words, they want to do exactly with this platform what they called Windows 8 a "catastrophe" for attempting in one small section of it. Don't get me wrong, I think it could still be cool and I'd be OK with their dedicated hardware platform being a walled garden in that way but it also seems...I don't know. Hypocritical is most certainly the wrong word but I don't know the right one to use.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

From what I'm reading in that Verge article, Valve appears to want to put a tight console/iOS/Windows Store like leash on this ecosystem that will run on their Steam box. In other words, they want to do exactly with this platform what they called Windows 8 a "catastrophe" for attempting in one small section of it. Don't get me wrong, I think it could still be cool and I'd be OK with their dedicated hardware platform being a walled garden in that way but it also seems...I don't know. Hypocritical is most certainly the wrong word but I don't know the right one to use.

Hypocritical works for me.

garion333 wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:

From what I'm reading in that Verge article, Valve appears to want to put a tight console/iOS/Windows Store like leash on this ecosystem that will run on their Steam box. In other words, they want to do exactly with this platform what they called Windows 8 a "catastrophe" for attempting in one small section of it. Don't get me wrong, I think it could still be cool and I'd be OK with their dedicated hardware platform being a walled garden in that way but it also seems...I don't know. Hypocritical is most certainly the wrong word but I don't know the right one to use.

Hypocritical works for me.

Yeah, I wouldn't call it hypocritical - mainly because Windows is supposed to be open to everyone (or at least that's what we've been used to as a product for the last 20+ years) whereas a dedicated "steam box" is bought just for the steam and its ecosystems. The two examples are different from one another. e.g. It'd be more akin to Valve complaining about Apple's strategies in iOS or OSX etc...

Wowsers. I need to know when the release date and what the unit price of this is going to be.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

From what I'm reading in that Verge article, Valve appears to want to put a tight console/iOS/Windows Store like leash on this ecosystem that will run on their Steam box. In other words, they want to do exactly with this platform what they called Windows 8 a "catastrophe" for attempting in one small section of it. Don't get me wrong, I think it could still be cool and I'd be OK with their dedicated hardware platform being a walled garden in that way but it also seems...I don't know. Hypocritical is most certainly the wrong word but I don't know the right one to use.

I'm guessing they want ease of use, and ease of use usually entails locking stuff down so the consumer can't break stuff. At the same time, I feel like this could be one of those "rising tides raise all boats" deals where similar app stores like Desura and Origin should have a seat at the table. However, I don't feel like either of them have been taking the same risks in this arena as Steam.

Also, I'm going to be surprised if this thing runs Linux out of the box. That's going to cut out a lot of the AAA publishers which would dull a lot of the consumer appeal I think.