Valve announces SteamOS

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HolyBaikal said:
Put perhaps a bit more simply, my question is this.

Is Valve's current strategy going to lead to me being able to play most MMORPGs on SteamOS?
That is probably my most favourite "PC-style" genre.

And I personally think they may need a more "bombastic" approach to achieve this degree of success.
Click to expand...

Probably not in the short term. It sounds like you should just stick with Windows.

To be honest, I expect all my game experiences to be worse on SteamOS for a few years at least. I just want to support improving the Linux gaming stack because I'm already a Linux person.
 
HolyBaikal said:
Steam is very powerful. They probably have more active users and sales than the PlayStation Network.

I still don't think that's enough make a significant impact in the hardware or OS industries, however. They need to make a concerted effort to reach out and make sure that their system gets as much software as possible.
Click to expand...

I don't think steam does. 65 million are registered users and we know not all of them are unique users . Psn has 110 million users reported by the guardian http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/03/sce...s4-camera-importance-of-psn-to-sony-pictures/ and XBL has about 48 million users but those are paying members I suspect the ratio between unique users and total amount is probably pretty close .

Although XBL and PSN doesn't report active members on at the same time like steam does only certain games do, but XBL sometimes show the most played games by unique users. But from a guess COD ghost gets around 200-300 thousand players at a time and is in the 2nd most played by UU and GTA 5 is the top played but doesn't show the active players I think. So it is possible that both xbox live and psn has more concurrent players. In terms of sales Valve never shows the numbers I heard . Idk which games or any that hit million sales on steam the only one I heard of is Gmod hitting 3.5 million sales , but that came out on November 2006.
 
HolyBaikal said:
Put perhaps a bit more simply, my question is this.

Is Valve's current strategy going to lead to me being able to play most MMORPGs on SteamOS?
That is probably my most favourite "PC-style" genre.

And I personally think they may need a more "bombastic" approach to achieve this degree of success.
Click to expand...

That's a tough question. You may be best off sticking with windows for a year or two since I don't think that will be something to occur for a while. For all I know they may have a deal in the works with someone, Blizzard have openly expressed excitement for steam machines, maybe they would. I'm not sure how other MMORPGs have evolved to include other platforms. There may be other solutions though. Oddly we don't know enough about how in home streaming will work, and it could be possible to stream non-steam games by adding them to the client for all we know.
 
thefil said:
Probably not in the short term. It sounds like you should just stick with Windows.
Click to expand...
I think that that shows flaws in marketing strategy, though.

Many millions of people are going to stick with Windows or consoles for not having the kinds of software they want or need.
Which is why Valve needs "bombastic" software support, to convince an industry and customers to support them.
 
Nzyme32 said:
That's a tough question.
Click to expand...
It's not tough, it's meaningless, at this point.
He should ask this when these Steam machines would be out on the market and developers/publishers will make it clear if they have any interest to support them or not.

"Well, I want to play Rift and TES Online. Will I be albe to do that, UH?"
How can we answer, yet? Maybe we are going to argue for several pages about how he should stick to Windows if he loves these games and then they will be the first confirmed ports for StOS/Linux barely two weeks later, still months in advance to the hardware.
 
HolyBaikal said:
I think that that shows flaws in marketing strategy, though.

Many millions of people are going to stick with Windows or consoles for not having the kinds of software they want or need.
Which is why Valve needs "bombastic" software support, to convince an industry and customers to support them.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I'm getting your logic. Consoles launched this year with a minuscule launch line up that consists of ports, first person shooters and racing games. I don't see much "bombastic" software support for PS4 or Xbox yet. In fact, if a Steam Machine launched today it would have 10x the software these consoles have.

I agree that Valve has a lot of ground to cover getting Asian support, EA support, Blizzard support, etc but that doesn't make this an all or nothing approach.
 
HolyBaikal said:
I think that that shows flaws in marketing strategy, though.

Many millions of people are going to stick with Windows or consoles for not having the kinds of software they want or need.
Which is why Valve needs "bombastic" software support, to convince an industry and customers to support them.
Click to expand...

Yeah but that won't happen overnight. They need to start somewhere before they get full on support.
 
HolyBaikal said:
I think that that shows flaws in marketing strategy, though.

Many millions of people are going to stick with Windows or consoles for not having the kinds of software they want or need.
Which is why Valve needs "bombastic" software support, to convince an industry and customers to support them.
Click to expand...

But that is the inherent problem with Valve. They have no marketing other than their sales, what ever interviews they give and announcements they make. They rely on users almost spreading the word.

The way they are doing this, it makes little sense to make comparisons to other companies release products with massive groups of people doing internal testing, buying exclusives and spending further billions on marketing. You will not see any impact for at least 2 years or more, in the same way steam took several years to start having a diverse set of games. If you want to compare directly to something like the PS4 and Xbox One, competitively, you might as well say their official release is more toward 2016. This is a very long play, exactly as Steam has been

Quotes for clarity: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=93597577&postcount=4241
 
TucoBenedictoPacifico said:
It's not tough, it's meaningless, at this point.
He should ask this when these Steam machines would be out on the market and developers/publishers will make it clear if they have any interest to support them or not.

"Well, I want to play Rift and TES Online. Will I be albe to do that, UH?"
How can we answer, yet? Maybe we are going to argue for several pages about how he should stick to Windows if he loves these games and then they will be the first confirmed ports for StOS/Linux barely two weeks later, still months in advance to the hardware.
Click to expand...

Precisely, these won't be launching for a while. Lot of things can happen till then. Not to mention there's still the beta.

Nzyme32 said:
But that is the inherent problem with Valve. They have no marketing other than their sales, what ever interviews they give and announcements they make. They rely on users almost spreading the word.

The way they are doing this, it makes little sense to make comparisons to other companies release products with massive groups of people doing internal testing, buying exclusives and spending further billions on marketing. You will not see any impact for at least 2 years or more, in the same way steam took several years to start having a diverse set of games. If you want to compare directly to something like the PS4 and Xbox One, competitively, you might as well say their official release is more toward 2016. This is a very long play, exactly as Steam has been
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I'd classify it as a problem. Their secrecy can be annoying, but otherwise I like how their messaging isn't some corporate suits trying to chew stuff in my mouth with "bombastic" shows and billion dollars and all.

But out of curiosity, how many people here would like it if Valve played it as the console guys?
 
TucoBenedictoPacifico said:
It's not tough, it's meaningless, at this point.
He should ask this when these Steam machines would be out on the market and developers/publishers will make it clear if they have any interest to support them or not.

"Well, I want to play Rift and TES Online. Will I be albe to do that, UH?"
How can we answer, yet? Maybe we are going to argue for several pages about how he should stick to Windows if he loves these games and then they will be the first confirmed ports for StOS/Linux barely two weeks later, still months in advance to the hardware.
Click to expand...

Touché!
 
thefil said:
But, their interests are tangibly more in line with your interests than Microsoft's are. At least in the long term.
Click to expand...

At the moment it certainly seems like it. MS is by no means great or even decent. I just don't see Valve as the saviour of PC gaming and don't think their motives are what they are made out to be.

Nzyme32 said:
Remember that their OS is open source. I'd eventually imagine that alternate store fronts will be added or users may make custom ones that start at said alternate store. There's a talk (from Variety - DICE 2013 I think) and Gabe explains its part of what they see for the future of steam. They recognise themselves as well as greenlight as being a bottleneck and intend to have the steam store as its own store but then everyone can make their own store to direct users to different content. If I recall correctly, Gabe said he would like to buy from a Yahtzee Croshaw store

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeYxKIDGh8I&feature=share&t=30m15s (it makes more sense if you watch the whole thing)
Click to expand...

The underlying OS is open source, they don't talk about Steam OS, specifically they talk about Linux... In this talk Gabe talks about user created content and curated store pages, in no way does he imply that other DD services would be able to sell through their front end. This is totally in line with their current direction. Where they let users create Items in their games, let the community vote on them and then let the creators sell them in game (while getting their cut). This direction isn't only there to empower the userbase it safes them on curation and QA and content creators. It also seems that they see their games as platforms for others to create content for it.

I'm still relatively positive about the whole thing and the only reason that is, because it's Valve and not some other company I wouldn't trust to get this even remotely right. I think we will see how it all pans out and how open Steam OS itself will actually be.
 
TucoBenedictoPacifico said:
It's not tough, it's meaningless, at this point.
Click to expand...
Well, my point is that, to become successful, they need to pursue a strategy that will leave them with most popular MMORPGs supported by their system.
MMORPGs have millions of fans and are an important part of PC gaming.

To have a very successful system would be at least eventually having a very large library of software support.
And not having MMORPGs is missing a major portion of what they should have.

They should pursue a market that will leave them with most popular MMORPGs, and within the next 5 years or so. And as many games and other software as possible.
 
Morzak said:
in no way does he imply that other DD services would be able to sell through their front end.
Click to expand...

I meant to say there is nothing to stop users circumventing the steam store in favour of other stores, or making an interface for other stores, assuming they support linux.

Or at least thats what I thought you could do with an open source OS?
 
HolyBaikal said:
They should pursue a market that will leave them with most popular MMORPGs, and within the next 5 years or so. And as many games and other software as possible.
Click to expand...
Oh, I definitely agree they should. But I also think that's exactly what they are doing.
With what degree of success, time will tell.
 
Nzyme32 said:
I meant to say there is nothing to stop users circumventing the steam store in favour of other stores, or making an interface for other stores, assuming they support linux.

Or at least thats what I thought you could do with an open source OS?
Click to expand...

The OS and store are different things. Gabe meant opening the Steam API, which would lead to custom steam storefronts.

SteamOS is open, so people can put stuff on it, but Steam itself is still closed for now.
 
ashecitism said:
The OS and store are different things. Gabe meant opening the Steam API, which would lead to custom steam storefronts.

SteamOS is open, so people can put stuff on it, but Steam itself is still closed for now.
Click to expand...

Ok can someone educate me then? I thought with an open source OS (ie the source code is their to be tampered with), you could theoretically create a new distro based on it. Could a user not create new menus in steam that essentially function to access content from other places and even remove or alter the store menu to access other services? So I mean to say, not altering the steam store itself, but either removing the store entirely from the OS in place of a different set or adding a new section such as "alternate stores", for example, if the was an imaginary GOG linux webpage or Origin, make an interface for it to function through the Big Picture interface? If not, what exactly can be done to the OS, what are the benefits of open source?
 
Nzyme32 said:
Ok can someone educate me then? I thought with an open source OS (ie the source code is their to be tampered with), you could theoretically create a new distro based on it. Could a user not create new menus in steam that essentially function to access content from other places and even remove or alter the store menu to access other services? If not, what exactly can be done to the OS, what are the benefits of open source?
Click to expand...

I think you are mixing two different things.
Even if SteamOS is open and free, and even if they release the Steamworks API as a free tool anyone can use, as they claimed they were planning some time ago, that in no way implies that the official Steam Storefront would become open as well.
Best case scenario, others would be able to create clones of the official Steam store and use all its features. Which means other developers/publishers could take advantages of all the Steamworks features and use the same interface (or even a different one, if they want), but Valve will always be the only one able to decide what to put on *their* stores.
 
Nzyme32 said:
Ok can someone educate me then? I thought with an open source OS (ie the source code is their to be tampered with), you could theoretically create a new distro based on it. Could a user not create new menus in steam that essentially function to access content from other places and even remove or alter the store menu to access other services? So I mean to say, not altering the steam store itself, but either removing the store entirely from the OS in place of a different set or adding a new section such as "alternate stores", for example, if the was an imaginary GOG linux webpage or Origin, make an interface for it to function through the Big Picture interface? If not, what exactly can be done to the OS, what are the benefits of open source?
Click to expand...

Depends on how the actual OS is setup. We'll have these answers answered when we finally get it.
 
Yeah, people are going to tailor it to their liking, I'm definitely expecting some different distros based on this to show up etc, but Steam itself is still closed. Once they open it up it'll mean people can create their own storefront, but the main front will still be Valve's.
 
TucoBenedictoPacifico said:
I think you are mixing two different things.
Even if SteamOS is open and free, and even if they release the Steamworks API as a free tool anyone can use, that in no way implies that the Steam Storefront would become open as well.
Best case scenario, others would be able to create clones of the official Steam store and use all its features.

Which means other developers/publishers could take advantages of all the Steamworks features and use the same interface (or even a different one, if they want), but Valve will always be the only one able to decide what to put on *their* stores.
Click to expand...

I edited my post. I don't mean to change the store, but to simply make another menu, that acts to give access to other stores (such as a currently imaginery GOG linux store, or Origin linux store). You create a section within steamOS that lets you explore other linux content not available from Valve. By the same token, could you not block out the Steam Store (again not actually altering it) and have the default startup menu be this theoretical user made and inserted alternate store fronts?
 
People could probably do those, yes. Making an OriginOS (A SteamOS fork that boots into Origin at startup), or something like that for example.
 
HolyBaikal said:
Put perhaps a bit more simply, my question is this.

Is Valve's current strategy going to lead to me being able to play most MMORPGs on SteamOS?
That is probably my most favourite "PC-style" genre.

And I personally think they may need a more "bombastic" approach to achieve this degree of success.
Click to expand...
Valve has never had a 'bombastic' approach. Steam's success is the result of this same type of process.
 
ashecitism said:
People could probably do those, yes. Making an OriginOS (A SteamOS fork that boots into Origin at startup), or something like that for example.
Click to expand...

That's what I hoped. Ultimately the capabilities of the OS are now in the hands of the people, so I or someone else could make an emulator section, video editing section or, if valve ever become some anti-consumer mess, we could re-purpose the OS to access a different store
 
Stupid Valve time, now I'm wondering if they are going to release the download today. D:

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Give SteamOS
 
Nzyme32 said:
That's what I hoped. Ultimately the capabilities of the OS are now in the hands of the people, so I or someone else could make an emulator section, video editing section or, if valve ever become some anti-consumer mess, we could re-purpose the OS to access a different store
Click to expand...

All of this is possible. Just so long as you understand that people won't be adding GOG support to big picture mode - the Steam program itself will remain closed for the indefinite future (as far as we know).

But with some basic web tutorial you would be able to easily install GNOME or KDE (both desktop environments with windows, mouse, folders, etc) and from there build up any kind of computing environment you wanted. Or you could install XMBC as a launcher for emulators, movies, games, etc.

*edit* how easy this is depends on if they include a package manager. I'm guessing it will be debian apt, given their preference for Ubuntu.
 
Nzyme32 said:
I meant to say there is nothing to stop users circumventing the steam store in favour of other stores, or making an interface for other stores, assuming they support linux.

Or at least thats what I thought you could do with an open source OS?
Click to expand...

We will se how easy it is for 3rd parties to integrate into BPM. As far as I can see the underlying OS is only reachable if you activate this in an checkbox in the settings, this would severely hamper the reach of non BPM applications.

But as long as there is no final version and there isn't more information it's hard to tell, I'm really looking forward to CES and hope that we will get a clearer picture of how it will shape up and I'm really hoping it will be great and really open, I'm just not so sure about it.
 
That's close enough to Ubuntu to be a very good choice.

I'm sure years ago, no one would have imagined that Debian would represent the most successful branch of Linux.
 
Doesn't look like it's going to finish anytime soon, not when it's getting DDoSed:

Code: 
~/Downloads$ wget -T 30 -c http://repo.steamstatic.com/download/SteamOSInstaller.zip
--2013-12-14 10:39:40--  http://repo.steamstatic.com/download/SteamOSInstaller.zip
Resolving repo.steamstatic.com (repo.steamstatic.com)... 208.64.203.149
Connecting to repo.steamstatic.com (repo.steamstatic.com)|208.64.203.149|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1006147291 (960M) [application/zip]
Saving to: 'SteamOSInstaller.zip'

 0% [                                       ] 4,011,486   57.6K/s   in 61s     

2013-12-14 10:41:06 (63.9 KB/s) - Connection closed at byte 4011486. Retrying.

--2013-12-14 10:41:07--  (try: 2)  http://repo.steamstatic.com/download/SteamOSInstaller.zip
Connecting to repo.steamstatic.com (repo.steamstatic.com)|208.64.203.149|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 206 Partial Content
Length: 1006147291 (960M), 1002135805 (956M) remaining [application/zip]
Saving to: 'SteamOSInstaller.zip'

 1% [                                       ] 12,164,347  50.6K/s   in 72s     

2013-12-14 10:42:48 (110 KB/s) - Connection closed at byte 12164347. Retrying.

--2013-12-14 10:42:50--  (try: 3)  http://repo.steamstatic.com/download/SteamOSInstaller.zip
Connecting to repo.steamstatic.com (repo.steamstatic.com)|208.64.203.149|:80...
 
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