Valve announces SteamOS

Status
Not open for further replies.
I'm guessing reveal #2 will be their controller, and #3 will be the general idea of different manufacturer's Steamboxes, and Valve's personal 'Better' (as they've discussed before, the kind of default) model.


Based on the symbols, #2 is probably Steambox (circle means OS so SteamOS in a box) and #3 is family sharing
 
i am kind off worry
i am not used to linux
all my life was on Windows
i have Gaming laptop
and my most of my work depend on windows products
installing other OS in my laptop seem a bit hassle for me
are they gonna stop making games for windows ?
are they gonna be exclusive games for steam OS ?
i also play BF3 and some game on Origin
what is gonna happen ?

and i use Dolphine and PCSX2 all the time

Don't
You'll be fine if you can click icons that is.
Times they are a changing
Gratz
Wine runs most windows apps
Life is full of challenges
Probably not in the short term, but eventually
I would imagine so
again Wine

Dolphin and PCSX2 both have Linux versions ;)
 
They should release a more advanced joy to key equivalent (Pinnacle Game Profiler) built in to Steam and implemented when you run games, with profiles created by the community to enable controller support in every single thing they have on their service by default.
 
You can install it on any computers with a monitor.

It's just another option for people who would like a dedicated gaming OS, you don't really have to use it though, as I think games will continue being multiplatforms, and the OS is free so that's cool.

The question now probably is how many devs would actually develop Or do a linux port of their games. I mean, thats added dev costs right?
 
Fuck a steambox, after this announcement I want to see a Steam handheld/tablet. A Linux based tablet that will natively play a number of PC games and can then stream my non-native Steam games to my handheld device any where in the home?


That's more enticing than the Shield IMO.

Agreed. A stamos steamlet would be awesome.
 
I'm not entirely seeing the point in this.

Who owns a "living room machine" capable of playing games at reasonable fidelity?

Assuming Valve will announce the 'Steam Box', who would be willing to drop a (probably) reasonable amount of money on one when only some of their games will run on it. The streaming idea is pretty cool, however that will require the user to already have a gaming PC. Those who already have a gaming PC probably wouldn't be willing to purchase a Steam Box as they are generally going to be gaming on a PC, usually with a kb + m. And if they wanted to game on the TV, all they would need to do is to temporarily move their desktop and plug in a HDMI cable.

I can maybe see people using this OS occasionally when they want to game on a TV. However having a separate device dedicated to it seems pointless.
 
So how would this be beneficial to me?

Steam OS apparently has better performance with Valve's Linux build on their games compared to Windows, but what of the others? I won't have access to my whole library if I'm just using one computer. If I dual boot, then I just have to go back to Windows to play all my other games anyway. The streaming is a good compromise for the people with multiple computers though.

Steam box in two days it seems. (Circle in a box).

Edit: Seems like some other people share my thoughts.
 
XBMC will still probably be better for a HTPC usage than Steam OS. I'm sure you'll be able to run XBMC from Steam OS, but if HTPC is more of your interest, you may as well install many of the easy Linux distributions that is lightweight and boots directly into XBMC. I don't see this as a replacement for that area.

I do. XBMC isn't really that revolutionary or unique. If Valve makes it easy to develop for, and they probably will. Within a month you'll have most of the same addon equivelents from XBMC. Work with Netflix, HBO, Comcast, TWC etc to port their apps over and it will already have trumped XBMC as a living room device.
 
A bit late, hoping to dual boot this on a Macbook Air. No need for Windows for a while. Especially if it has a small storage requirements, which I bet it has than Windows 8/7 seeing it is based off Linux.
 
does streaming a game affect your bandwith cap? because if so, then i'll just put the SteamOS right next to Netflix in my "looks cool but I can't use it" pile

If you're streaming in your internal network it doesn't and that's what I'm assuming they're talking about.
 
I don't think a streaming box is the end purpose for SteamOS. Streaming your existing Windows/Mac content to your TV via a SteamBox is good to start out with, but eventually I think Valve wants the native SteamOS apps/games library to expand and SteamOS to become a major player.

I'd like to see if gaming engines such as Unity, Unreal, CryEngine, etc will soon announce support for SteamOS.
 
That's how I would formulate it if I was in Microsoft marketing. As I'm not, I would say this is Valve preparing for Microsoft inevitably deprecating the Windows desktop, and thus the end of Windows as a open marketplace.

.

I wanted to make a snarky comment to all the new juniors, too. Instead I'll just quote yours because it is good.
 
Uh-uh. That would be a sure way to kill performance. The other option is dual booting which kills the convenience factor of this. They're not going to abandon over 90% of their market to promote this.

Fair enough, but I offered it as a possibility for those titles that are exclusive to SteamOS. Valve do have the resources to allow HL3(Source2) to run natively on Win/Mac/Linux/SteamOS, so I don't doubt they'll continue to support those other OS's in the near future. I suppose it'll come down to adoption of SteamOS if they are to go exclusive.
 
Except this isn't anything like that analogy because Windows already exists.

I get why Valve is doing this, like 95% of the people who use Steam are on Windows. If the idea of a SteamOS is to somehow lower that number then they are insane.

It makes more sense to me thanks to the point Opiate brought up. That this isn't even really a thing built for the PC - or as a Windows replacement - in the first place.

I don't think anyone wants to get into that outside of maybe Google. All your enterprise companies will be running Windows for the next few decades.
 
I don't get it. If it's a linux distro with some kind of modification... why not just use ubuntu + normal steam? It'd be massively more capable and you can always use big picture... seriously I don't get it.

I'm not really that technical knowledgeable with linux but I assume it is so that they can probably have their own package management system and dedicate it to installing drivers/softwares that are more gaming centric, and not to mention that it will come preinstalled with a list of programs and drivers so gamers won't need to go through the process of "how to install steam?" on whichever linux distribution they have.

Also I would assume ubuntu users will continue to be able to install steam on their OS, so I don't really see the problem.
 
Steam could make it more attractive for devs to release a Stamos/linux version by just reducing the normal 30% cut Valve gets for each sold copy if they made a linux version too.

So e.g. Dev X releases game Y only for windows and get a 30% cut, now the Dev X makes a Stamos Version of Game Y and only get a 20% cut on sales on windows or Stamos. After 1-3years Steam could go back to the normal 30% cut after Stamos has enough users.

edit: i love the nick Stamos xD
 
I'm seeing some confusion here. You do not need two PCs to play games using SteamOS.

You know how some games support MacOS, and some games only support Windows? SteamOS will be exactly the same. Some games will support SteamOS natively. Some games will not.

If your game does support SteamOS, you can install it directly to the device, just as you do with Steam now, just as you download games to your gaming consoles, and just as you install games to your smartphones. SteamOS supported games will be purchasable, downloadable, installable, and playable right from the source.

If your game does not support SteamOS, you can install it to a Windows or Mac device as we currently do, and stream the game over a local network to a SteamOS device. So if I had a SteamOS box in my lounge room, but a game that does not support SteamOS, I could turn on my Windows 7 PC in my bedroom, turn on Steam, install the game there, and play it in the lounge room on my SteamOS device by streaming data over the network from my PC.

Though this will obviously be problematic for games that don't support SteamOS, Valve has made a point that they're working closely with developers to ensure games do work with SteamOS. And if a game is native to SteamOS, it can be installed directly to a SteamOS device. Absolutely zero streaming required. Examples, going by the SteamOS home page: Total War: Rome II and Metro: Last Light.
Unless the SteamBox is as good as your PC why would you play Metro on it? And if it is, how much are you spending to have two equally powerful PCs?

This is like an extremely expensive HDMI cable.
 
This is great news. If it takes off it could decouple PC gaming from Microsoft and the fate of Windows, which I have seen as the greatest threat to PC gaming in recent years.
 
Ugh I'm in class and I barely had time to read the OP. This is amazing though. This is going right onto my SSD as soon as it's released. Now I just need HL3...
 
I don't understand the appeal of this. If you hook up a PC to your TV you might as well have Windows instead of a gaming only OS.
 
I'm not a PC gamer, so feel free to completely dismiss this, but this feels like a misstep to me.

But hell, they can probably afford to take a gamble every now and then without taking too big a hit. I just don't know how big a splash all this Steam Box stuff is going to have.
 
The question now probably is how many devs would actually develop Or do a linux port of their games. I mean, thats added dev costs right?

Yea that's the biggest problem I think, I wouldn't install this if I know most of my games wouldn't be compatible =(
 
I don't get it. If it's a linux distro with some kind of modification... why not just use ubuntu + normal steam? It'd be massively more capable and you can always use big picture... seriously I don't get it.

Capability != Usability

Ubuntu has issues that'd make normal folk not want to touch it with a barge pole, installing Steam itself included.
 
Metro: Last Light and Rome II likely coming to SteamOS/Linux? That's newsworthy in its own right.

4A Games already confirmed that they are currently porting Metro Last Light to Linux weeks ago. It's somewhat old news. Football Manager 2014 is already available for pre-order on Linux, so I could see Sega trying the get Creative Assembly to do the same with Total War II.
 
I'm very excited. I don't really see a downside from a consumer's perspective. It's free, seems to make everything even more accessible, we love Steam, and besides...
HL3 confirmed
!

My computer is essentially dedicated to Steam, anyway, so I don't have a problem with it - at all... I really hope that the Family Sharing feature is publicly available soon. I have more than one Steam account, and being able to play those under my primary profile would be fantastic!
 
if valve plans on releasing their own hardware or getting a runtime platform rooted in their software stack thing to OEMs in an attractive manner, starting from a base of Windows just wouldn't work. Licensing costs and the inability to directly change the operating system level of the stack make Windows not an option.

If they wanted to have their own hardware and/or provide to users/OEMs a turnkey operating system+frontend+services stack, they basically had to fork Linux to make it work. Nothing else had anything remotely reasonable drivers and Valve does have most of their games running on it already with some reasonable grassroots indie / small studio/publisher support.

I understanding if they released their own console/pc hybrid it would make sense but then they would have the problem that it will be un-upgradable and will not be able to play high spec games after a year or so.

I think Valve knows that Microsoft will (probably in windows 9) start selling full pc games through their app store and this will be a big problem for stream.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom