SteamOS! Out in the wild!

[Porn Shop Clerk]

 

 

Valve Reveals First Gen Steam Machines

JANUARY 6 - CHRISTEN

Over One Dozen Designs Announced 

January 6, 2014 – Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Dota 2, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced over one dozen Steam Machine designs now in production from leading manufacturers and targeted for release in 2014. 

The lineup of Steam Machines announced today offers a wide variety of price and performance options made possible by the Steam Machine’s open design, with systems starting as low as $499 and top end systems rivaling today’s bleeding edge gaming PCs. 

 

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/announcements/detail/1927838910223830657

[d-dave]

I don't know if y'all have been checking out the CES coverage, a lot of manufacturers are going to be releasing "console" sized Steam Boxes.  There have been some cool looking designs popping up lately.  Though it does lead to the question of convergence. For example, lots of X1/PS4 discussion here, and in the PS4/X1 thread, lots of PC/Steam discussion.  Are we getting to a point where it's all kind of the same?  I mean, with everyone now using a x86 processor and basically the same bones on the GPU, how really different are the games and experiences going to become?  Like take Diablo III.  It's still Diablo III with their a controller or a mouse and keyboard.  Its still the same game as on PC or console.  Not a HUGE difference in the play through.  

 

Random musing, but hoping that the Dx issue can get sorted for the steam machines.  If they are only going to be able to offer the stream from your big box for a long time, it really hampers the idea behind a sepearte steam box/os.  I still look forward to seeing the AAA+ games on a steam box.

[Porn Shop Clerk]

even if valve does win the directx/opengl war, then without the backwards compatibility to run directx games....fug it.

 

but:

 

 

 

definitely gonna be interesting.   that slim for 1000$ is pretty damn impressive if you have that kind of money to throw around.

[d-dave]

The maingear system is nuts:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/maingear-reveals-tiny-mighty-spark-steambox/

 

It's the size of a DVD case....  Though it does use mobile parts, but at that size, pocketable gaming PC (stretch!).  This is some actual innovation (at least on the hardware side of life).

 

Slightly off topic:  AMD's proof of concept for project discovery:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/07/amds-project-discovery-tablet/

 

Along the same lines of portable gaming.

 

Let's also not forget Nvidia's Tegra K1 - 192 Kepler cores...955mhz (est.  Anandtech).  THat's a good bit of power at 2w...

 

I'm glad there is some cool stuff coming out at CES.  Honestly, I feel like with the right marketing SteamOS can become a serious competitor in the gaming scene.  Maybe not mobile big, but carve out a large niche in the "console" space.  Though I feel like with the growing strength of mobile processing power, that's where we're going to see more energy go because of the growing monetization of the games.

[Porn Shop Clerk]

i dunno, they could eventually stream to your tablet anywhere you're connected to the internet....even at starbucks...and then you could plug in a steam controller (possibly) and stream metro 2033 to your tablet from your gaming rig

 

the potential for all of this has me pretty excited

[Porn Shop Clerk]

not a fan of alienware, but this is pretty:

 

[lumbeecheraw75]

Im keeping an eye on this one

 

http://piixl.com/

 

[Porn Shop Clerk]

that is....brilliant

[Porn Shop Clerk]

[natty]

i dunno, they could eventually stream to your tablet anywhere you're connected to the internet....even at starbucks...and then you could plug in a steam controller (possibly) and stream metro 2033 to your tablet from your gaming rig

 

the potential for all of this has me pretty excited

 

I wouldn't get too excited about that.  You'd need some kind of quantum entanglement type of technology to pull that off.  

[Porn Shop Clerk]

the graphics won't be as crisp as if you were sitting at your gaming rig, but it could be done

[natty]

If your gaming rig were generating the graphics that wouldn't be the issue(although bandwidth would be your limiting factor).  The problem is latency.  Even if you had the greatest network you could possibly create virtually every game would be unplayable.  It simply comes down to physics.  

 

edit:  Basically it's about lag.  Playing online games lag is an issue but it's that bad, but you're essentially doubling the problem by introducing input lag.  So if it's a game that can be played with lots of lag it doesn't matter, but that eliminates pretty much every modern game.

[Porn Shop Clerk]

they talk about that in the vid.  right now its better to have both connected by ethernet to the same network.

 

but who knows what the next 10 or 20 years will bring.

[natty]

Yeah I should have watched the video before commenting.  The results are about what I'd expect.  I don't think that could ever move past a wired LAN, and even still the performance isn't that great.  Completely kick-ass concept for sure but I'll remain skeptical about it working reliably.