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[ashecitism]

Hey, anyone here remember these?


Thought so.


It's been over a year since they've been announced and several months since Valve have officially talked about them. The recent mentions in the Phil Spencer thread prompted me to check out the current situation and how things have progressed (?).

1. Steam Machines

This is going to be the shortest. Due to the OS and controller not being ready they got delayed till next year. Though any PC with Steam installed qualifies and some of the machines that have been revealed at CES are starting to come out with Windows and Xbox controllers. Most notable is the Alienware Alpha. Also, according to Techradar Valve are planning a larger presence for GDC, but you know how Valve is....

2. Steam Controller

Last time we unofficially heard about it was during summer, where it was revealed it now has a thumbstick instead of its "d-pad". (This is the third iteration btw heehee) What's its current version, how's it performing, no one knows!

What we know is they've sent their own SM prototype and V1 controller to 300 testers. I've been monitoring them for a while. Check out that thread for impressions. After the initial activity however it completely died out. Occasionally I stumble on some testers on the steam forums or reddit where they say "yeah yeah there's still some activity on Valve's bug tracker" and that's it. Gaffer Shalarn was the most active, check out his channel to see how the controller fared in multiple genres, but keep in mind that version is outdated. The impressions I got from following them is that a couple of testers got used to it after hours, days, weeks, but most people dropped it in favor of their preferred controller.

As for public showings, the V1 was at CES, and the V2 was at GDC. Both times it flopped.

You want to read devGAF impressions? Here and here. A lot more positive. They're about the V1 model.

3. SteamOS

This is going to be the longest. First let's look at the announcement:

In SteamOS, we have achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing, and we’re now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level. Game developers are already taking advantage of these gains as they target SteamOS for their new releases.

In-home Streaming

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 Library 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 Library 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 View

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.

Hundreds of great games are already running natively on SteamOS. Watch for announcements in the coming weeks about all the AAA titles coming natively to SteamOS in 2014. Access the full Steam catalog of nearly 3000 games and desktop software titles via in-home streaming.

Out of the features, In-Home Streaming, Family Sharing and Family View have been released. As for the multimedia features? Well, there's a music player with MP3 support. Oh and Steam Broadcasting beta.


Now let's look at the games. At the time of the announcement there were around 300 games on steam for linux. Now? Over 800. Notable releases include Metro Redux (currently the most advanced games on linux with OGL4.x support, though for ex lack a resolution option ), CivV, XCOM, Dead Island, Borderlands 2 and TPS, lost of indie games and Valve games (save for L4D1, Alien Swarm and not a game, but SFM). Yet to be released titles include Bioshock Infinite, Beyond Earth, Rome 2, pCARS.

Looking at the current top 10 played games on steam (bolded are not on linux)

1. Dota 2
2. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
3. Team Fortress 2
4. Garry's Mod
5. Football Manager 2015
6. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
7. Sid Meier's Civilization V
8. Counter-Strike
9. Warframe
10. Arma 3

the situation is not bad.

Now for performance, updates and tools. SteamOS updates have slowed down to point users on the forum had to call out devs with "what's going on?"

We're hard at work on many SteamOS-related things, but a lot of it is currently happening in the Steam client itself.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/624076027452595522/#c624076027814858493

There has been a beta update since.

Tools and performance. When asked what devs wanted the most Valve said a debugger. So they built one for the devs. Now first, as you can see the updates have slowed to a crawl.

@g_truc its not dead, its just hibernating pending #glnext. It may or may not ever support gl 4.x depending on demand.

https://twitter.com/basisspace/status/536990800593174528

Aka the #1 requested thing is now on hold and doesn't even support the Metro games. How's that?

Second, its lead designer left Valve in the summer, but before doing so had some things to say which stirred up the hornests' nest. Afterwards also made some not so good remarks about Valve.

Hey, this is just a thought, but maybe Valve developers could stop locally optimizing for their bonuses by endlessly tweaking and debugging various half-broken dysfunctional codebases and instead do more to educate developers on how to do this sort of work correctly.

Perhaps after bonus season is over at Valve (around Feb./March), and assuming the right devs are even still there (i.e. not fired/cleansed due to petty politics), something could be done to improve the crappy state of OpenGL on Windows which will indirectly help the Linux driver situation. Devs publically speaking their minds about the situation could make a difference.

Valve has started the ball rolling and can't let up now without squandering considerable developer street cred.

http://richg42.blogspot.hu/2014/11/state-of-linux-gaming.html
http://richg42.blogspot.hu/2014/06/article-directx-creator-says-apples.html
http://richg42.blogspot.hu/2014/06/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love.html
http://richg42.blogspot.hu/2014/06/opengl-is-broken.html
http://richg42.blogspot.hu/2014/05/the-truth-on-opengl-driver-quality.html
http://richg42.blogspot.hu/2014/05/things-that-drive-me-nuts-about-opengl.html

Relevant GAF threads:

www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=817453
www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=828370

As for performance, looking at GOL, Phoronix and reddit, performance for these games is usually good (when the drivers are alright), but not only it's not significantly better than their Windows versions, they lack the options/features those have. So, there's a parity issue (heh). Why would people chose to have inferior versions? DX12 is next year, Mantle has been in beta, and majority of the devs still use OGL3.x for linux (and mac), Valve included, the supposed vanguard's of this initiative. OGL Next is still years off. Will devs really wait for it?

Conclusion

Valve are worryingly quiet, development seemed to have come to a halt (though games have been slowly coming), public interest is around zero, impressions so far haven't been very good, and Valve seems to treat this as a pet project and not as seriously as it should. At this point not a lot of people would shed a tear if this whole initiative gets swept under the rug and if Valve focused on making current Steam better and maybe, just maybe shed some light on upcoming games to placate fans. Oh and TF2, GO and Dota fans also have some words to say.

Bonus:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/8/3852144/gabe-newell-interview-steam-box-future-of-gaming

Do you think you can really disrupt the home entertainment space and compete with Microsoft and Sony?

The internet is super smart. If you do something that is cool, that's actually worth people's time, then they'll adopt it. If you do something that's not cool and sucks, you can spend as many marketing dollars as you want, [they] just won't.

I think the internet has been pretty clear about this, Gabe.

Spoiler

I'm also prepared for eating crow....maybe in the next decade.

 

[Biker19]

I agree with you. Valve has done a very poor job regarding this.

People are more interested in PS4's & Xbox One's now.

 

[DylanTackoor]

Was hyped for all this, now I'm just happy with Big Picture.

Valve is slowly becoming just "the guys who make Steam" for me, and nothing more unfortunately.

 

[ashecitism]

Valve has yet to demonstrate why SteamOS and OGL is supposed to be so good. How about demoing with Source 2 then? Oh wait, it's already out...and is tied to Windows and D3D11. Neat!

 

[Syf]

I hope they scrap the whole project. Maybe get back to making games.

 

[Tregard]

I do feel Valves complete radio silence on both games and their OS/Controller/Machine initiative very worrying. Seems like they didn't realise quite how much work was going to be needed on it. I just hope this hasn't affected the production of any titles, because if the machines and controller turns out to be a fruitless endeavour, that all seems like wasted time

Spoiler

I know the people making the games aren't necessarily the people making the OS

 

[grandwizard]

They went dormant on the Steam Controllers after numerous hands on events that left people either confused at it's usefulness or outright stating they didn't like the way it felt and controlled. It's bound to have a learning curve but all those articles aren't good press for something in active development and with still many iterations to go so I believe they've just stopped showing it publicly until they are sure they have it right.

I also think they have run into the software issues that come with m/kb emulation that are simply unavoidable like in-game button prompts being mislabeled and are either figuring out a solution to that or rethinking the entire project.

I also followed many of the people who got early prototypes on Youtube who were posting videos and all of them stopped updating.

 

[Ikuu]

I hope they scrap the whole project. Maybe get back to making games.

This was the first year since 2002 where Valve hasn't released a game.

 

[Tobor]

I want the controller so much. I want to play Civ on the tv without a mouse.

I'm afraid all the naysaying from non imaginative mouth breathers is going to sink it. /sigh

 

[DylanTackoor]

I hope they scrap the whole project. Maybe get back to making games.

Nah, I'm still looking forward to streaming games to a small Steambox

 

[RipperGrim]

Steam machines still just look like prebuilt PC's to me, I have no clue why there was a big fuss about them when they were announced. The OS and the controller were the only things that were actually new.

I also seriously doubt that the controller will have the ability to replace the mouse and keyboard, sure Valve can make it a workable replacement but I don't think people will actually be that convinced to use it more than any other controller on the market for PC gaming.

 

[RuneFactoryFanboy]

My HTPC build has been on hold since that controller was announced.

I've got a steam catalog of about 30 games now that I haven't touched because I have no PC to play them.

 

[Bizzquik]

I want the Steam Controller to be amazing. This thing that can bridge the gap between Keyboard+Mouse only titles and my living room. Something that can add legitimate benefits to my PC gaming experience.

But we've seen so few demos of the controller in real-world use that its reduced to just year-old talk. ....Valve, I can't get hyped if there's nothing to see.

 

[orava]

Steam machines still just look like prebuilt PC's to me, I have no clue why there was a big fuss about them when they were announced. The OS and the controller were the only things that were actually new.

Because they are. The point is that the machines are linux based prebuilt PC's. Currently market is filled with Windows PC's and there really is no other way getting linux more popular option that with dedicated gaming machines. Regular Ubuntu based PC's are never going to do well. Games are very good way to get people interested.

I also seriously doubt that the controller will have the ability to replace the mouse and keyboard, sure Valve can make it a workable replacement but I don't think people will actually be that convinced to use it more than any other controller on the market for PC gaming.

It's not meant to replace mouse and keyboard. It's meant to be a alternative controlling method for "living room PC's". You can definitely use it with your desktop too if you want to. They just can't use a standard Xbox controller because it needs to work with every single game released in steam out of the box and without help of kb+m. Currently the xbox controller supports natively maybe about 20-30% of the games and it has no support for kb+m only games at all.

 

[Abounder]

At this rate they're dead on arrival unless they're optimized for the upcoming VR craze

 

[HC Luvva]

In my opinion, the last big thing that Valve did was the Dota 2 championships netting them a lot of publicity and cash. Their communication regarding projects leaves something to be desired, but I don't see them staying quiet unless they really don't have too much faith in pursuing SteamOS.

Steam broadcasting makes me think otherwise, though, because they're making an effort to incorporate more features in the Steam client and I hope to see more beta features next year, too.

 

[LurkerPrime]

For the Steambox and SteamOS in general,I find Valve's laissez-faire attitude towards development very discouraging. I won't hop into OS or hardware they've made until there's been a lot of proof that it works the way they say. Additionally, I find Valve's history towards security particularly troubling. I doubt they'd handle it the same way for their OS, but it doesn't give me any confidence in their ability.

I suppose I should admit that I'm not a BPM/controller-preferred sort of person to begin with, so the success or failure of SteamOS isn't really a big deal to me either way. So long as it doesn't try to replace KB/M then I'll be fine with it.

 

[Nzyme32]

It feels pointless to be so analytical of a group of products that not only clearly haven't developed far enough, but also haven't been released. It's clear to me that as usual, Valve have misjudged how much time they would need to have everything nailed down with these.

On the one hand, it seems they needed to be open about their intention to get the ball rolling with third parties towards linux, machines etc and they claim to want to be as open as possible about the development process. Of course they recoiled from all that as things inevitably go wonky and public perception dwindled and info were kept to a typical minimum.

From all this, "publicly" the last official bit of news was back at the end of May when everything got delayed, and recently when they mention a showing at GDC in March 2015. There is so little to go off publicly it is actually hilarious. You can say "your worried", "it's a failure" etc or just choose to ignore the whole thing till they actually show something meaningful worthy of someone's time. I choose the later

 

[AmyS]

Indrema L600
Infinium Labs Phantom
Valve Steam Machine

There's a pattern there.

'Nuff said.

 

[Dr Dogg]

To be fair I think Valve showed their hand to early and went to fast to show off SteamOS and the Steam Machine initiative. Should have really taken a couple of years working with devs and pubs to shore up Linux support to give the GPU vendors and driver folks time to get it really up to a great standard before going full on with this. I still think it's fingers in too many pies for them and even just SteamOS and set out requirements for input devices for third parties to manufacture along with hardware would be a big undertaking.

 

[AcceptableGhost]

I wish they would atleast "finish" and release the controller, it seems like it could be a good steam big picture companion if nothing else.

 

[orava]

Indrema L600
Infinium Labs Phantom
Valve Steam Machine

There's a pattern there.

'Nuff said.

Well there is a self built steam machine running in my living room right now.

 

[ashecitism]

the problem in nutshell imo

1. Valve announced it too early
2. what they announced and released as beta were half-baked
3. Valve Time struck in/Valve's flat structure being at work (this needs direction and commitment)/internal bandwidth issues

coupled with Valve not being aggressive enough to push this themselves, instead relying on willing collaboration with others

 

[RipperGrim]

Because they are. The point is that the machines are linux bases prebuilt PC's. Currently market is filled with Windows PC's and there really is no other way getting linux more popular option that with dedicated gaming machines. Regular Ubuntu based PC's are never going to do well. Games are very good way to get people interested.

I know this, which is why I'm not sure why there was any kind of excitement and hype around these PC's, nothing new besides the OS which is available for all PC's anyway. I see zero reason to get them over any other prebuilt PC except maybe if for some reason they are cheaper.

It's not meant to replace mouse and keyboard. It's meant to be a alternative controlling method for "living room PC's". You can definitely use it with your desktop too if you want. They just can't use a standard Xbox controller because it needs to work with every single game released in steam out of the box and without help of kb+m. Currently the xbox controller supports natively maybe about 20-30% of the games and it has no support for kb+m only games at all.

I actually have a PC set up to my TV and I use a Bluetooth Keyboard and mouse which is fine because I just put it on the coffee table, the thing I still don't see many people using the controller for games that don't actually require a keyboard if they are the type of person who wants their PC set up as "console". Nearly all of the new games coming out have controller support and the ones that don't are mostly ones that people just don't want to use a controller for anyways like RTS games for example.

I just don't see it being used for games that people would prefer a mouse and keyboard for and for the games that people do want to use a controller why they choose it over a 360 controller? Now I have seen how they are touting as being more precise for FPS's and having performance similar to a mouse but I suppose we shall have to wait and see how true that holds up.

 

[Reg]

Would love the proliferation of linux to happen because of these boxes, but right now I have very little faith of this happening any time soon (within 5yrs or so).

 

[outunderthestars]

All I wanted from a Steam Machine was an affordable small form factor machine, with a UI for gaming and access to my Steam library.

I bought an Alpha and have all of that.

REALLY don't see why Valve is insisting on a custom OS just to play games. I wish they'd just stick to evolving the big picture mode instead.

 

[Vinterbird]

Nah, I'm still looking forward to streaming games to a small Steambox

Yup. I want an Apple TV sized thing with the Steam controller.

 

[Hylian7]

Like every Valve project, it's just a Valve time effect. It is good to see them refine stuff like the controller until they get it right. I installed Steam OS on a computer made it out of extra hardware I had and put it on my living room TV. I mainly use it to play in-home streamed games on it and it works very well, like I am actually playing on the host machine.

Steam machines I think are held back by the controller not being out yet.

For those complaining, "Valve doesn't make games", that simply isn't true. They aren't coming out with brand new games right now, but they are constantly updating their games that are already out. Dota 2 gets updates all the time, some big and some small. They even announced major technical improvements coming to the game in the near future, hinting at Source 2, since you can actually already play the game in Source 2 using the Dota 2 Authoring Tools.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive just had an entire classic map redesigned both visually and for gameplay: The classic map Train. On top of that updates for the game come out all the time.

Team Fortress 2 has lasted for SEVEN YEARS already and shows no real sign of stopping, and will even continue if Valve goes through with that idea of letting the community handle all the updates. Still this year they had a major Halloween event that involved lots of new content including bumper cars in a Super Smash Bros.-style minigame.

Obviously, we all want the elephant in the room: Half-Life 3. We know it has been worked on in some capacity, since we saw those logs that showed stuff for that, L4D3, and Source 2.

Valve does a lot, and things with them take time, and that is okay with me.

 

[vasametropolis]

Valve is a ridiculous company. I love them, and tons of people want to work there, but it's just... off. Flat management kills their productivity. They need to reorganize the whole thing to get anything done. If they didn't have revenue from Steam they'd be fucked.

 

[JoeyJungle]

I'm really psyched for the Steam Controller. I'd like to play Europa Universalis while leaning back in my chair, and it's really annoying to do that using a 360 controller (or any traditional controller) + xpadder as a mouse. Hope it comes out someday.

 

[onetoescape]

Same as outunderthestars I bought an Alpha as well looking forward to it. For Valve its a chicken and the egg scenario for Steam OS. People wont switch till the games are there publishers are reluctant to publish as gamers arent there. Continue to develop Big Picture mode and they should be fine

 

[Nymerio]

Indrema L600
Infinium Labs Phantom
Valve Steam Machine

There's a pattern there.

'Nuff said.

That's about as idiotic a statement as people saying the oculus rift sucks because vr headsets of the 90's sucked.

 

[TheBaronOfNA]

Well it was already a pet project to begin with that was probably that probably didn't get off the ground as initially expected. But I doubt they are not working if it. The silence is hardly indicative given that is Valve.

 

[Wolves Evolve]

The comments about "bonus season" tell you everything you need to know about their game development and hardware development culture.

 

[LowSignal]

I figured Valve would workout a deal with Sony or MS to get steam on systems

 

[SteveWinwood]

i mean i dont get why they announced it if we were just going to be waiting forever valve sucks

/internet

i dont get why theyre so silent and dont tell us anything about anything we can handle it valve sucks

/internet

 

[orava]

Valve is a ridiculous company. I love them, and tons of people want to work there, but it's just... off. Flat management kills their productivity. They need to reorganize the whole thing to get anything done. If they didn't have revenue from Steam they'd be fucked.

Sure there is the "valve time" but their productivity is definitely not lacking. Steam is getting huge new features and they are supporting multiple very popular games. They also have their own in-house new game engine coming out . There is also the whole custom linux distro thing which they are updating quite frequently. What else? The VR research project? Controller hardware design? What other "game dev" does the same amount of stuff?

 

[Dolor]

I look on Steam and see 800 games for Linux and a whole host of those are mid-tier up to AAA.

I can't imagine anyone thought that would happen even two years ago. That is a success in my mind regardless of whatever else happens.

Also, like it or not, I don't think the Linux initiative was ever for people (like me) who see a $100 OS as little more than a petty inconvenience. For some people (read: poor people in developing countries), that's a huge burden and may make getting into PC gaming nearly impossible (especially if all they want and have money for is to play f2p games like Dota).

 

[Lunar15]

That's the thing: Valve is privately funded. They don't have to worry nearly as much about quarterly performances as a company that is beholden to shareholders. That's part of why Valve TIme exists, they're not like the other big publishers where they have to meet certain quotas by certain dates.

Now, I bet there's some investors they still answer to, but the pressure isn't really as high. Add in their ridiculously flat structure and you're gonna get some really, really messed up production schedules.

Valve's a weird company, man. So weird.

 

[Nymerio]

The comments about "bonus season" tell you everything you need to know about their game development and hardware development culture.

What does it tell? I'm genuinely curious, because so far it seems to be working out for them.

 

[SteveWinwood]

What does it tell? I'm genuinely curious, because so far it seems to be working out for them.

it tells that a few people who dont work there anymore had a problem with it

and if you want to read into it as some sort of larger trend in the company that you can then point to and piggy back all problems onto and sound smart on an internet message board like you know what youre talking about you can do that too

 

[outunderthestars]

I look on Steam and see 800 games for Linux and a whole host of those are mid-tier up to AAA.

I can't imagine anyone thought that would happen even two years ago. That is a success in my mind regardless of whatever else happens.

Also, like it or not, I don't think the Linux initiative was ever for people (like me) who see a $100 OS as little more than a petty inconvenience. For some people (read: poor people in developing countries), that's a huge burden and may make getting into PC gaming nearly impossible (especially if all they want and have money for is to play f2p games like Dota).

Windows isn't $100 for OEM's. It is reported to be as low as $15 per machine

That's the thing: Valve is privately funded. They don't have to worry nearly as much about quarterly performances as a company that is beholden to shareholders. That's part of why Valve TIme exists, they're not like the other big publishers where they have to meet certain quotas by certain dates.

Now, I bet there's some investors they still answer to, but the pressure isn't really as high. Add in their ridiculously flat structure and you're gonna get some really, really messed up production schedules.

Valve's a weird company, man. So weird.

Which is not a good thing when you are making promises to a dozen hardware partners who spent tens of millions of dollars readying hardware launches that had to be scrapped...

 

[AcceptableGhost]

The thing is that Valve usually gives little to no indication of what they are doing. Like was there ANY indication that Steam Broadcasting was going to hit? Like tomorrow out of the blue they could announce a release date for the Steam Controller or it could never be released ever. Who knows. It was really strange that they announced this initiative so early though.

 

[orava]

The thing is that Valve usually gives little to no indication of what they are doing. Like was there ANY indication that Steam Broadcasting was going to hit? Like tomorrow out of the blue they could announce a release date for the Steam Controller or it could never be released ever. Who knows. It was really strange that they announced this initiative so early.

And the same time people are complaining that they announce stuff too soon. People will complain anyways. If they announce stuff soon or stay behind the scenes, it does not matter.

 

[Nymerio]

it tells that a few people who dont work there anymore had a problem with it

and if you want to read into it as some sort of larger trend in the company that you can then point to and piggy back all problems onto and sound smart on an internet message board like you know what youre talking about you can do that too

Ah, got it.

 

[SteveWinwood]

And the same time people are complaining that they announce stuff too soon.

exactly

they can never ever win

they learned they get less shit when they just launch stuff out of the blue then if they announce something and it gets delayed

so thats what they do

the fans are too dumb to be able to handle delays so they just dont tell them anything

 

[Khaz]

I want the controller so much. I want to play Civ on the tv without a mouse.

I'm afraid all the naysaying from non imaginative mouth breathers is going to sink it. /sigh

I loved their first iteration. trackpads and buttons on the back didn't scare me. I still want it and think it would be fantastic once used to it. Mouse games would be glorious.

People want a one-controller-fits-all-games. But it doesn't work like that. You need a controller for 3D games (360) a controller for 2D games (Saturn), a wheel and pedals for your racing games, a joystick for your flight simulators, a trackpad for your mouse-based games.

 

[Kathian]

I want the controller so much. I want to play Civ on the tv without a mouse.

I'm afraid all the naysaying from non imaginative mouth breathers is going to sink it. /sigh

So fucking much this. People are going to turn it into an Xbox controller. Use an XBOX controller ffs.

Steams lack of commitment is really a let down. The original controller was the best, not this all rounder frankenstein.

It's not for fps or Side Scrolling.

 

[Dolor]

Windows isn't $100 for OEM's. It is reported to be as low as $15 per machine

Perhaps, but as any PC gamer will tell you, pre-builts blow for value gaming builds. They always ALWAYS skimp on the GPU.

So my point still stands I think.

 

[Krejlooc]

Valve has yet to demonstrate why SteamOS and OGL is supposed to be so good.

They did so at Dev Days with benchmarks and statistics. There is a significant number of users in China with DX11 capable GPUs who use Windows XP as their operating system of choice, which restricts them to DX9 featuresets. By using VOGL you can bring DX11 features to these people without them upgrading anything in the process. It's a free upgrade to millions in china.

Nice of you to ignore all my impressions which I've posted throughout gaf, btw. I'm not only a tester, I support the thing in Half Life 2 VR with native code.