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STEAM 2013 Announcements & Updates VIII - Don't ask when the sales are starting.

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KenOD

a kinder, gentler sort of Scrooge
whats the best cyberpunk game on steam that is not shadowrun?

Deus Ex is the usual go to recommendation. For it's world and atmosphere.

However if you are going for story, I quite recommend Gemini Rue

Not the best, but I still recommend taking a look is Binary Domain. It's amusing for those that can get past some flaws.
 

Gamerloid

Member
Seen already?
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/25/commercial-steambox-prototype/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedly
prototype design

steammachines837ibuypower.jpg

I think this would look way better in black. Black + Red is just excellent.
 

Sajjaja

Member
The verge is saying it's $500 with an amd multicore and R 270. Sounds like a decent deal seeing that i'll come with a controller. I also like that we'll be seeing smaller pcs come out because of this.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/25/5146398/ibuypower-steam-machine-499-radeon-r9-270

!!! Guess I'm gonna wait a year.


Oh wait, it's not an actual PC right? Balls.

I don't think he was talking about people trying to run it on an abacus connected to a Lite-Brite.
; )

lol one of the better ones I've heard :p
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
There's nothing wrong with competition. I just think Steam's built so much momentum in the PC digital distribution space that these alternative services are never going to achieve the same kind of market penetration. Even with EA and Ubi leveraging their own properties to push their services, I can't imagine Origin or Uplay coming close to the reach of Steam anytime soon. If it actually costs them less to operate their own services than it would to sell games through Steam and pay the "Steam tax", then it makes sense. But if their goal is to wrest the digital distribution crown from Steam, it's a lost cause at this point.

It doesn't as the very nature of maintaining your own platform means various ongoing costs. Valve's 30% cut essentially pays for everything as there are no other fees involved with distributing your game via Steam.

!!! Guess I'm gonna wait a year.


Oh wait, it's not an actual PC right? Balls.

SteamOS isn't a full-blown OS but users will be free to ditch it for something else.
 
how much does SMB usually go for duing the Autumn and winter sales?
hoarding PR points in preperation

Super Meat Boy? It was $2.50 like three times in the last two weeks!

They seriously need to hire and train more people.

That would go against the lead-guitarist culture.

All of those games (and also games like Battlefield 3, Dead Space 3 and Mass Effect 3) are loss leaders.

At some point you need to stop loss-leading and start actually making money on stuff....
 

KenOD

a kinder, gentler sort of Scrooge
Well they just gave up on FIFA Manager and it's loses. 10 versions and they finally realised it wasn't working.

Mind, they are taking that money and effort and putting it into loss-lead mobile titles and F2P for unproven situations, but still, that's a change.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
That would go against the lead-guitarist culture.

The employee handbook that leaked last year mentioned a hiring push for support staff, but this doesn't appear to have made an impact (understandable given the recently-announced 30% YOY increase in active accounts, I suppose).
 

Dolor

Member
All of those games (and also games like Battlefield 3, Dead Space 3 and Mass Effect 3) are loss leaders. Each title represents an opportunity to grow the Origin service, not break digital sales records.

EA and Origin is doing fine, I'm sure.

This comment is hard to understand. Origin as a service and those games in particular can't be a loss leader for EA since third party games barely sell there. If they're biggest sellers on Origin still lose money, what is the point of Origin exactly? EA isn't Valve playing a long game here. They answer to shareholders every quarter. There is no reason for it to exist if its biggest sellers are still losing money. Loss leaders only work if there is something else to buy that makes them money. If they are still waiting to make money 2 years in, they better rethink pretty quick because they've already gone through their portfolio of games already. Battlefield 4 isn't going to draw in that many more gamers than Battlefield 3 did and so on.

Neither of which impact Origin since those are games and Origin is a digital distribution service.

Neither of which impact Origin. If people are buying titles from Origin digitally, that's a success as far as EA is concerned. They can't care about fostering a community like Steam. That's not their goal. Their goal is to get you to buy EA titles (and publishers that support Origin as an option) titles from them.

If this means locking Battlefield behind an Origin wall, that's what they'll do. And so far most people that aren't Steam die-hards don't care. They'll go where the game goes if that's a game they want to play. And that's the market EA wants.

I don't understand this comment either. The service of Origin only makes money if it sells games. The games it sells almost exclusively are EA games. If the EA games it sells tank, Origin suffers. It cost money for EA to build Origin. To recoop that money (and justify Origin's existence), they have to make more from their 30% additional cut than they pay to build and maintain their service (dat "awesome" EA customer service costs money) and from the lost customer base by not being on Steam to market them to 65M PC gamers. If the sales of their games (the driver of their revenue) tanks like many of their recent PC exclusive games have, it is harder to justify Origin's existence.

None of those reasons seem to be a game changer in my opinion.

If you are doing a cost-benefit analysis to see if you recoop your costs of building Origin and making games exclusive, these are exactly the things you are factoring in. Each one is likely worse than they would have initially estimated when Origin was built. Each negative shock to expectations can accumulate to a poor decision. Given EA's past mistakes, I suppose it's possible they didn't look at these things and just said, "Fuck it. Let's do it." But with some experience working at a large public company, I would guarantee someone deep inside EA made these exact calculations. The only question is whether these accumulated miscalculations are enough to tip the scales.
 

Sajjaja

Member
SteamOS isn't a full-blown OS but users will be free to ditch it for something else.

You can slap a copy of windows on it if you want, but it'll come with SteamOS out of the box.

Yussssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. That's if this holds true of course. Because that's a fantastic price, just gotta see what the processor is and hopefully not an APU.
 

Clawww

Member
I definitely want the Steam controller more than anything. Just thinking of some games I'll revisit with rear buttons--life will be good!
 

Exuro

Member
Yussssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. That's if this holds true of course. Because that's a fantastic price, just gotta see what the processor is and hopefully not an APU.
Well there should be several boxes shown off at CES so it'll be interesting to see what companies can pack for their prices. If the iBuyPower machine stays at $500 then I think we'll see several resonablely priced machines.
 

Servizio

I don't really need a tag, but I figured I'd get one to make people jealous. Is it working?
Eryi's Action is not a fun game to play, and yet I can't seem to stop playing it due to my fascination with what "haha, that killed you, isn't it funny? Try again?" moment will come next.

I don't mind a platformer with absurdity or a lot of deaths, enjoying both Pole's Big Adventure on Wii and Super Meat Boy, but here it's just so strangely constructed and I'm not sure who the target for such a game is or how many people will actually make it to the end out of a sense of enjoyment.

It's actually something of a sub-genre of platformer. BEHOLD:

http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/

There's also some really great videos of various Mario level edits that are really trollish, but I can't seem to summon them from the ether easily at the moment.
 

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
Like this?

Banderas+4_47fe2b_4786237.gif


Ssshhh, just go with it.
But that looks like a monolith that wants to subjugate people.

Valve console should look like it's "for the peeps". All while being black and white!

Nah. Warm grey with orange lights. Valve colors.

...or maybe the Valve guy should be the console!

Think about it - controller ports coming out of his cranium!
 
It's actually something of a sub-genre of platformer. BEHOLD:

http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/

There's also some really great videos of various Mario level edits that are really trollish, but I can't seem to summon them from the ether easily at the moment.

I'm a big fan of those games, but Eryi's Action makes two fundamental mistakes. Firstly the game is slow and secondly restarting takes way too long each death. When you combine the two it is a bit of a mess.

Games such as:

I wanna be the guy/boshy/gaiden/fangame and I wanna kill the guy

are much better examples of the genre.
 

KenOD

a kinder, gentler sort of Scrooge
It's actually something of a sub-genre of platformer. BEHOLD:

http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/

There's also some really great videos of various Mario level edits that are really trollish, but I can't seem to summon them from the ether easily at the moment.

I Want To be That Guy and other titles it inspired I fully get, but that's still a matter of skill beyond the blind jumps. Generally you can keep your character alive with just enough skill and memorisation. It comes out of the Super Mario Bros 2/Lost Levels style. A giant wall of spikes with the barest minimum space to land you can see what is most likely required.

A title like Eryi's Action seems to just about be 80% memorisation and then skill at avoiding a particular action moment that is designed to kill you because you couldn't possibly know about it before. I compare it more to an eagle you would never possibly see before spawning and killing you in Ninja Gaiden than I would actually seeing what is ahead and having a developed sense of skill already. You can't really avoid a plant killing your character on the level select screen unless you've already encountered it for example, but I could avoid a missile being launched at me in Super Meat Boy.

It's not a mark against it, I'm sure some love they "I did not expect that" style, I just find it to be very weird. Cyberia 2 game design choice weird.
 

JBourne

maybe tomorrow it rains
I'm a big fan of those games, but Eryi's Action makes two fundamental mistakes. Firstly the game is slow and secondly restarting takes way too long each death. When you combine the two it is a bit of a mess.

Games such as:

I wanna be the guy/boshy/gaiden/fangame and I wanna kill the guy

are much better examples of the genre.

Floe. You died.
 

Backlogger

Member
In theory Origin is a great idea. Fundamentally it is the same thing as steam, so why shouldn't EA try to make it their own and have control of the PC distribution market?

They have made a complete half-assed mess of it of course, just like Microsoft. But that is kind of a different issue and I don't blame them for trying.

Like Uplay, they either need to get serious or get rid of it.

I don't even see uPlay and Origin (and more so the latter) as trying to compete with Steam. If they were they would be trying to build something as good as and better than Steam. All Origin is, in my humble opinion, is a way to control the distribution of their games. In fact, its not even competition, its the opposite of it. EA loses because there are games I would be more likely to buy if they were available on Steam. The only Origin titles I own were either free or heavily discounted via a bundle.

Now that Steam is essentially going from a distribution platform to actual an actual OS that will run on hardware that others will produce and sell it makes even less sense for EA to prevent their titles from being sold on Steam in some fashion.

This is all just my opinion obviously, but I know a lot of people that think this way.
 

Backlogger

Member
I think that I would be more interested in building my own Steam box. Maybe not spend quite as much on it as I did my PC, but enough to run the majority of my games. I'll be interested to see the pricing options though on these machines.

They could manufacture some pretty inexpensive ones if they wanted, tailored to older/classic games and indie games. I have a dual core PC that just has old games and indie games on it hooked up to one of my TVs.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
I don't even see uPlay and Origin (and more so the latter) as trying to compete with Steam. If they were they would be trying to build something as good as and better than Steam. All Origin is, in my humble opinion, is a way to control the distribution of their games. In fact, its not even competition, its the opposite of it. EA loses because there are games I would be more likely to buy if they were available on Steam. The only Origin titles I own were either free or heavily discounted via a bundle.

Now that Steam is essentially going from a distribution platform to actual an actual OS that will run on hardware that others will produce and sell it makes even less sense for EA to prevent their titles from being sold on Steam in some fashion.

This is all just my opinion obviously, but I know a lot of people that think this way.

Aside from Anno 1404, which I'm hoping eventually returns to Steam one day, I own the Uplay and Origin games I actually want to play (Tintin and The Saboteur respectively). Everything else that Ubi and EA leave behind their own services I'd only buy if they appeared on Steam because game count.
 

Anustart

Member
It is. It's also not at all demanding, so no matter what you're playing on it should run very well.

If it works. I have to disable every single USB device to get the game to launch. When it does, it's gorgeous and amazing. YMMV, but I just can't get it to cooperate with my computer. Shame, as it's my favorite game. Ever.

Yeah, I have to enable vsync for the game to function properly. If I don't, the game runs at 400+ fps and throws everything way out of whack. Glitchy ass movement, scripted stuff not happening, amongst other problems. Though vsync puts it at 30fps for whatever reason instead of 60, but I'm not that worried I guess.
 

JBourne

maybe tomorrow it rains
Yeah, I have to enable vsync for the game to function properly. If I don't, the game runs at 400+ fps and throws everything way out of whack. Glitchy ass movement, scripted stuff not happening, amongst other problems. Though vsync puts it at 30fps for whatever reason instead of 60, but I'm not that worried I guess.

Use D3DOverrider or turn vsync on through your GPU control panel.
 

Grief.exe

Member
I think that I would be more interested in building my own Steam box. Maybe not spend quite as much on it as I did my PC, but enough to run the majority of my games. I'll be interested to see the pricing options though on these machines.

They could manufacture some pretty inexpensive ones if they wanted, tailored to older/classic games and indie games. I have a dual core PC that just has old games and indie games on it hooked up to one of my TVs.

Just sell me those sexy boxes, I will build it myself.
 

KenOD

a kinder, gentler sort of Scrooge
I wonder if that will be a craze? Dedicated Steam Machine builds of custom design, e.g. one built for the specs of Shoot-Em-Ups in the style of classic top down arcade machines for example.

Nah, that would be too silly. Almost as silly as building an arcade looking box to hook an iPad into with joystick controls.
 

Anustart

Member
Use D3DOverrider or turn vsync on through your GPU control panel.

Since I'm being dumb tonight, I cannot find a link on guru3d to download rivatuner to get D3DOverrider, and Nvidia control panel doesn't seem to be on this computer for whatever reason, only GeForce Experience. And....I can't find a link to control panel....
 

Kodiak

Not an asshole.
So, Steam Machines are incredibly intriguing. I've been considering building a new gaming pc for about a year now, but the prospect has always had a lot of turn offs. The bulky case, the somewhat convoluted process of building it myself and the high price tag for the specs I want. I already have a laptop, a 360 and a 3DS so it's so much a luxury item that it's hard to justify the cost. I picked up the PS4 to play next gen games, but I have a sinking feeling that in a year or two Steam Machines will make the purchase look somewhat like a poor decision.

However, with Steam Machines, they have the form factor and accessible price of consoles, but will be updated every year. They will be constantly changing and improving, so they will rapidly outstrip consoles within a couple years, while remaining competitive in terms of price.
 

Vibranium

Banned
In theory Origin is a great idea. Fundamentally it is the same thing as steam, so why shouldn't EA try to make it their own and have control of the PC distribution market?

They have made a complete half-assed mess of it of course, just like Microsoft. But that is kind of a different issue and I don't blame them for trying.

Like Uplay, they either need to get serious or get rid of it.

I would ok with Origin if EA would just implement it with all their PC games on other clients and then put them on Steam like Uplay (with Steam Achievements as well, unlike Ubi, grrrr). I'd love to see a journalist ask an exec if they've considered that.

If any of you fellow Steam gaffers score an interview with EA, ask that for me please!
 
I finished DmC tonight. I had only previously played Devil May Cry 4, and enjoyed that quite a bit. I definitely liked parts of DmC, but the characters were pretty much all terrible. Bad, boring writing, for annoying, flat characters. It's constantly reminding you what's going on, in the fairly standard plot, in ways that people in their situations would not. For example, the big bad says "I am a God!" almost every time he's on screen. We know.

header_292x136.jpg

(Sorry if by putting this Steam grid here made you think it was a ModBot giveaway...)

I really dug the movement fluidity though. Moving Dante around just felt good to me, as I really felt I had complete control over where I was, and where I would go. Traversing the constantly transforming environments stayed fun throughout. Most of the boss fights were a ton of fun to play, as well, from not only a combat perspective, but also moving around the arenas. They really nailed these.

The combat systems are compartmentalized in a way that helped me wrap my head around the combo system; a skill I've struggled with in previous games in the genre. I feel like if nothing else, the game probably helped me understand the genre better. I'm looking forward to jumping back to Devil May Cry 4, or Metal Gear Rising (come on Konami!) to see how the skills translated. I'll probably check out the Vergil's Downfall DLC next though, while the combat's still fresh in my mind.

So yeah, it's a pretty dumb story, with an approachable yet deep-ish combat system, and some awesome transforming terrain traversal. Looks like it'll be between 7.49 - 9.99 in the coming sales, which is a pretty good price for what I played. Consider it!
 
I did that for my desktop, but for under the TV? I'd rather get something that's engineered by someone to be small, quiet, and cool.

Same. I'm sure it can be done by those in the know, but those three objectives would be difficult for myself, especially when factoring in price.
 

Grief.exe

Member
I did that for my desktop, but for under the TV? I'd rather get something that's engineered by someone to be small, quiet, and cool.

Same. I'm sure it can be done by those in the know, but those three objectives would be difficult for myself, especially when factoring in price.

You just need to look into an HTPC case, those usually take the guess work out for you.

Throw in a smaller form-factor mobo like a m-atx, possibly a boxed watercooling unit, and fans rated for an extremely low noise factor.

Hope this will give rise to Steambox cases you can buy separately.

I hope so. Though Lian Li makes a very attractive HTPC case, though quite expensive.
 
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