Valve announces SteamOS

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I don't understand why everyone is bum-rushing the idea that Valve is trying to get into the console game. I don't see this challenging the console market anymore than regular PC gaming. This has absolutely nothing to do with Consoles.
 
syko de4d said:
Just create a Linux version of Origin. I am pretty sure Steam will not stop EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft etc. from creating a program and run it on SteamOS or any other Linux Version. If Valve will stop them, SteamOS would be worse than Windows8 and way less people would use SteamOS if you could only play Steam Games on it.
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Yeah. Also when theverge.com first broke the news of the SteamBox they said: http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/2/2840932/exclusive-valve-steam-box-gaming-console

Apparently meetings were held during CES to demo a hand-built version of the device to potential partners. We're told that the basic specs of the Steam Box include a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GPU. The devices will be able to run any standard PC titles, and will also allow for rival gaming services (like EA's Origin) to be loaded up.
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DieH@rd said:
No, it would have to be a native app that will grab Remote Play stream of the Big Picture Mode on PC, or native app that will have full client in it and stream only games from PC. Option #1 is way easier [just a small streaming client on Vita].
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Then the problem is that Sony will not support Valve, not the other way around, I suspect. First and foremost, SteamOS is not running on ARM wrappers (although it may evevntually).

But speaking economically, Sony would essentially be allowing a direct competitor to set up shop inside their closed ecosystem. That doesn't seem like something they'd willingly allow unless Sony was giving up on the entire Playstation ecosystem.
 
Grief.exe said:
Vita runs on an ARM processor. Valve, currently, does not have a wrapper to convert x86 to ARM.

That is the eventual goal, but not there yet.
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No, they can always do the same thing Nvidia did on ARM hardware with Shield. Just create small app that will serve as a streaming client, and PC will be streaming server.

If Shield can have Big Picture Mode streaming, so can Vita. Now, only a ton of stars needs to align.

Opiate said:
Then the problem is that Sony will not support Valve, not the other way around, I suspect.

Sony would essentially be allowing a direct competitor to set up shop inside their closed ecosystem.
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Do we know what are the limitations on the Playstation Mobile app ecosystem? Those apps can run on smartphones, tablets, Vita and PS3, and everybody can create them as long they pay for SDK [or maybe its free].

One dev already created simple PC Remote Desktop on PS Mobile, you can stream Windows desktop [and games] on Vita. It works slow because there is no HW acceleration, but it works.
 
Corto said:
For a common end user it will be completely transparent. Our TVs, SmartPhones, DVRs have OSes at their backbone. Most of them are Linux based. The UI abstraction and how intuitive/unobtrusive it is will be the source (or removal) of confusion.
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it will not be transparent at all, it will be completely opposite.

That is why your DVR looks and acts nothing like your TV and they both have nothing to do with your SmartPhone. All 3 of those are completely different from Windows PC.

And now SteamOS will be completely different from all of them.

Which is OK - Valve could take out one sting out of PC ownership - Windows OS license. However I can not see the big number of applications supporting it as all of them will also work on Windows, but most of Window's games wont work on Linux (like they dont now).

So it will take years to build up the following and then it might be good, as long as they dont give up on it.
 
DieH@rd said:
No, they can always do the same thing Nvidia did on ARM hardware with Shield. Just create small app that will serve as a streaming client, and PC will be streaming server.

If Shield can have Big Picture Mode streaming, so can Vita. Now, only a ton of stars needs to align.
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Shield is an open platform. Vita is not.

If Sony wants to make their platforms open they can, but they've shown absolutely no interest in doing so.
 
fizzgigg said:
Android is Linux based, Android is free, Android is open sourced. It's the same concept but steam build OS.
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Yep. SteamOS is very similar to Android in concept, it'll probably be sold in a similar fashion (an in-house boutique demo model next to mostly third-party systems) and it's being released for basically the same reason: to hedge against the incumbent and ensure the revenue-generating services of the company releasing the OS are available on every platform.
 
Train of Midnight said:
I don't understand why everyone is bum-rushing the idea that Valve is trying to get into the console game. I don't see this challenging the console market anymore than regular PC gaming. This has absolutely nothing to do with Consoles.
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I guess it's because Gabe has repeatedly said so. Well, not the 'console game', the living room gaming market, which is pretty much game consoles right now. No doubt there's an Apple TV on the way that's going to have us reevaluate that classification though.
 
So i had this idea. Will Stean Stream just let you set which part of the screen want to stream so you can stream non Steam games into the TV. Hopefully its not just steam games that you can stream but also the conplete desktop if you wish. How feasible is that?
 
SteamOS is about expanding Steam, not replacing it. Half Life 3 being SteamOS exclusive doesn't make any sense. Valve turns a humongous profit from Steam the service. Some kind of Steam console is just a way to expand the reach of the service.

Half Life 3 exclusive to anything robs Peter to pay Paul. Valve gains nothing by making it exclusive to the Steam console, Steam the PC client, Xbone, or PS4. Valve loses a ton of revenue, and for what?
 
DieH@rd said:
No, they can always do the same thing Nvidia did on ARM hardware with Shield. Just create small app that will serve as a streaming client, and PC will be streaming server.

If Shield can have Big Picture Mode streaming, so can Vita. Now, only a ton of stars needs to align.
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I misunderstood you, I apologize. I thought you meant native support for some reason.

I believe streaming is only possible through Nvidia hardware right now, could be wrong though.
 
DieH@rd said:
Do we know what are the limitations on the Playstation Mobile app ecosystem? Those apps can run on smartphones, tablets, Vita and PS3, and everybody can create them as long they pay for SDK [or maybe its free].
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The economic limitation is that any game running inside Playstation Mobile pays 30% of sale price to Sony.

If Valve wants to do that, again, it's perfectly possible technically, but that sort of closed platform is precisely the reason Valve is hedging their bets against Windows in the first place, so it doesn't seem likely.
 
Astery said:
Well, I already have the steam client on my pc, what's exactly the appeal of a steam OS or steam box? streaming tv?
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As a pc gamer with a certain mindset for tweaking or stability this is really good if valve makes the long time commitment. Valve also says performance is better, if they can make that double digit frame numbers people with that mindset will easily start looking to it for games not just windows 7 or 8.
 
DieH@rd said:
Valve.... PLEASE release Big Picture Mode app for Vita and VitaTV [Playstation Mobile app even]. If you are already supporting "remote playing" from PC, allow that Vita/VitaTV can grab that feed.

If you do that, I will be forever happy.
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That would finally give Sony a good OS.

XMB and the new ps4 interface looks downright terrible and cheap.
 
The primary purpose of SteamOS is to make sure Valve still has a future in the event that Microsoft actually ends up walling up future versions of Windows. Supposedly, there are four types of PC user... The first, the casual user, has already drifted towards smartphones and tablets. The other three are still currently served best by Windows, but one, the PC Gaming enthusiast, will likely drift to wherever they can best continue to play and support their massive PC gaming library which is likely to be on Steam. Should Microsoft kill the desktop, and thus support for the PC gamer's gaming library, PC gamers, at least, now have an alternative backed by the biggest seller of PC games... Valve.
 
ConvenientBox said:
Uh no... My office is my living room.

I've got my ps3, 360 and pc all hooked up via hdmi. Though I prefer playing pc games while sitting at my desk. Guess it depends on the games everyone plays...
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At no point are they hinting this is a desktop solution in any scenario. Otherwise they would have just replaced steam window ui with bpm a long time ago. I wouldn't plan to do any serious work on a 360/ps3 either.
 
Schweinehund said:
People were pretty pissed off in the early days of steam, they got over it though.

The problem is making the installation smooth and user friendly.
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Most poeple would just end up ignoring it because they don't want to switch and one game isn't going to make people switch. I'm sure people on sites like GAF would just wait until Valve is forced to make it available for everyone on Steam.
 
MrNyarlathotep said:
I'm curious what those are, because it's not even "use Office" anymore.
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Well, OpenOffice and LibreOffice aren't quite as good as Microsoft's Office suite. The best IDE for coding is still Visual Studio. Software for professional audio and video processing do not reach the level of sophistication and stability of the alternatives available under Windows.

Of course, this is all my personal opinion.
 
Valve should encourage developers and publishers to make sure games are SteamOS compatible, maybe take a smaller cut for those games. Keep the normal 30% rate, and for SteamOS compatible games take 25% instead.

Without that sort of encouragement I doubt all that many games, especially bigger titles, would end up with SteamOS support. And lack of support means they'll never see success with their long term goal.

DieH@rd said:
Wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playstation_Mobile

And to stop Sony from being pissed of about cut of Steam puchases, Valve can put a flag that will prevent purchasing when you are using BPM on Vita.
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Just make it library + community stuff only, no store.
 
Train of Midnight said:
I don't understand why everyone is bum-rushing the idea that Valve is trying to get into the console game. I don't see this challenging the console market anymore than regular PC gaming. This has absolutely nothing to do with Consoles.
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Right. This interfaces with the console market in the sense that Valve is targeting a portion of the "casual comfy couch" gamer market that consoles also target, but by and large this is an attempt to expand PC gaming downmarket (and, primarily, to hedge against vendor lock-in with the Windows platform) rather than to compete with consoles directly.
 
StuBurns said:
There's no way HL3 is exclusive to SteamOS. Firstly, it would piss off way too many of their fans, and secondly, they want to sell it, to as many people as humanly possible. It'll be on the consoles too.
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Maybe Valve would offer some sort of extra content on the SteamOS version. I'm not endorsing it, but I wouldn't put it past Valve.
 
angular graphics said:
Yeah. Also when theverge.com first broke the news of the SteamBox they said: http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/2/2840932/exclusive-valve-steam-box-gaming-console
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nice ;)

Now how will Valve ensure that people who buy a steambox will use it to play steam games and not Battlefield4 or Diablo3 LOS or even pirate games.

Maybe sell Steamboxes with a contract? Cheaper hardware but you pay like 20$ each month for the next 2 years and get 20$ in your steam wallet each month.
 
spwolf said:
it will not be transparent at all, it will be completely opposite.

That is why your DVR looks and acts nothing like your TV and they both have nothing to do with your SmartPhone. All 3 of those are completely different from Windows PC.

And now SteamOS will be completely different from all of them.

Which is OK - Valve could take out one sting out of PC ownership - Windows OS license. However I can not see the big number of applications supporting it as all of them will also work on Windows, but most of Window's games wont work on Linux (like they dont now).

So it will take years to build up the following and then it might be good, as long as they dont give up on it.
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But at that level you are dealing with UI not OS. You won't be compiling code to run games, you will click a button or do a gesture or make a natural voice command to start a game. The UI will be what the end user will interact with. If that is intuitive/unobtrusive there will be zero confusion.
 
DieH@rd said:
Wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playstation_Mobile

And to stop Sony from being pissed of about cut of Steam puchases, Valve can put a flag that will prevent purchasing when you are using BPM on Vita.
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You aren't understanding me. Playstation Mobile is exactly what I'm talking about.

Platforms like Playstation Mobile are precisely what I'm suggesting Valve is running away from. The same reason Steam isn't running on iOS is the reason it isn't running on Windows Store and also the reason it won't be on Playstation Mobile. The business structure of all three of these is functionally identical from Valve's point of view.

Sony has shown no interest in opening their platforms up. If you think Playstation Mobile is an example of an "open" platform, I don't think you understand what the concept means. Sony are not going to let the Playstation ecosystem out of their control, because they sure aren't making money on the hardware.
 
If they can sort out the driver and API issues then this could be big. That is not an easy thing to do tho, and they don't have direct control over it.

Second announcement should be their controller, third should be Source 2.0 (OpenGL based) and Left 4 Dead 3 to go with it.
 
Baron von Loathsome said:
Maybe Valve would offer some sort of extra content on the SteamOS version. I'm not endorsing it, but I wouldn't put it past Valve.
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I dunno, Valve doesn't seem to do exclusive content if they have the option not to. Team Fortress 2 outgrew console limitations as far as resource usage and updates and Dota 2's input demands are just too much for a controller, but they've done an admirable job of keeping Portal 2 and the L4D series up to parity with PC. As much as their platforms would allow, at least.
 
JNT said:
Well, OpenOffice and LibreOffice aren't quite as good as Microsoft's Office suite. The best IDE for coding is still Visual Studio. Software for professional audio and video processing do not reach the level of sophistication and stability of the alternatives available under Windows.

Of course, this is all my personal opinion.
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I am a work Mac user and and Windows gamer. I can do every single thing I need to do on my Mac, except play games. And that includes using Office on the Mac. The potential of SteamOS for me is still keeping a second physical game PC, but not having to install Windows on it. I realize this can't happen immediately because all the game I want to play won't be there natively. But a couple year from now maybe it will let me cut the cord.
 
Draft said:
SteamOS is about expanding Steam, not replacing it. Half Life 3 being SteamOS exclusive doesn't make any sense. Valve turns a humongous profit from Steam the service. Some kind of Steam console is just a way to expand the reach of the service.
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Exactly.

WhiskeyKnight said:
This has never been officially confirmed.
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No, it's just been practically demonstrated by the leak of Valve's JIRA install with a barren and inactive set of HL3 projects.

DieH@rd said:
And to stop Sony from being pissed of about cut of Steam puchases, Valve can put a flag that will prevent purchasing when you are using BPM on Vita.
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Your posts are basically the equivalent of port-begging in a game thread. I don't think this fantasy-world stuff is going to lead to any kind of interesting discussion.
 
yami4ct said:
Unless Valve is willing to let 3rd party marketplaces and easy side-loading of apps on SteamOS, I'd rather have a microsoft overlord. A SteamOS based future just sounds like console gaming with variable specs.
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it's linux and they've already said you can hack the software and/or load your own apps

anyone who wants to make a marketplace on this thing will probably be able to do so
 
Pretty amazing to read all the posts that read like the following:

The state of the games industry is X which makes Valve's plans hard to pull off; therefore, Valve's plan will fail.

No need to think of if state X might change.

If you can't imagine the gaming industry of all things evolving over time, you truly lack some imagination.

A number of new games (mostly indies and medium sized devs) already support Linux even without this new push. It can only grow with this new push, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a number of the major Steam-friendly publishers start pushing it as well. I could pretty easily see something like GTA V or/and MGR: R coming out with SteamOS support now. That would change things pretty quickly I'd imagine.
 
Orayn said:
they've done an admirable job of keeping Portal 2 and the L4D series up to parity with PC. As much as their platforms would allow, at least.
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Surely you jest? Portal 2's level creator isn't even on consoles. It didn't have the Super 8 trailer and that was on PC at launch.
 
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