Or so the Internet says. Per a request from Charles, this is getting its own thread. Feel free to read the lead-in. Valve is apparently planning on releasing a living room PC in 2013 at some unspecified point in the future. Non-upgradeable, no word on potential price point, and it sounds like they believe this will be a major market moving forward.
That is not what was said. Kotaku said that Gabe told them he expected other companies to start selling living room PCs next year.
Is your complaint that they might not be releasing next year, specifically? Edit: To remove presumptive snark.
It's about time. I've been using a living room PC since 2005 and every time someone new comes over and sees it they're amazed that such a thing is possible, they want one, but are somehow convinced that it would be way too complicated for them to set up. Take out that last part and I think there's a sizable market of people who now basically have huge 1920x1080 monitors in their living rooms and just need the PC to go with it.
Yeah. The only source on this subject is kotaku's article, which paraphrases a brief conversation on the red carpet they had with Gabe. There's very little of it that's direct quotes from him, and the stuff that is, we don't know what question it was in answer to. But the only mention of next year is a prediction that other people will be selling living room PCs by then. The rest of the article doesn't make it sound to me like Valve are that close to releasing their own.
I understand why this is, but if the Steambox doesn't run Windows games, doesn't that kind of put a big damper on the whole thing?
Indeed, though there's a strong push (mostly coming from the indie side) to properly support Linux. If Valve releases a steam box that's linux only, and it gains traction, then there will be massive pressure on devs to always do linux versions if they were already doing PC versions.
It's the chicken-egg problem that new game consoles always face, though: how does it gain traction if only a limited selection of games run on it? It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out.
Valve is on a big hiring kick for experienced Wine devs, so it should be able to run many Windows games when it finally hits.
I would guess living room PCs with Windows will exist. They'll just be more expensive, and maybe require you to get out the mouse and keyboard more often. I'm assuming Valve is going to be modifying Linux to make general OS stuff friendlier for gamepads+steam, which is a thing they can't do for Windows. Does that seem like a fair assumption? (I know very little about Linux)
Flip side: Large pre-existing library available at launch. edit: Half Life 3 exclusive: BETTER ANSWER
I guess we'll see... I haven't really looked into Wine in a long time. How reliable is it these days?
The Steam box isn't going to fight the consoles, it's going to fight Ouya for that highly contested, theoretical gaming space. FIGHT!
I think it's likely that the Steambox will be Linux-based and I suspect that Valve are banking on the increasing popularity of gaming on the Mac to 'bleed' over into the Linux world, especially with Steam, Steamworks and Steam Play being available on all three platforms now. I can see Valve spinning off one of the Ubuntu LTS releases (14.04 is the next one, so I would guess that they'll go with 12.04 for the initial release) into a custom distribution with Steam Big Picture as the desktop shell; exit Big Picture disabled; (solid) proprietary nVidia and possibly AMD drivers built-in*. They'll simultaneously release Steambox, which will run this Steam OS and double as a reference machine for other manufacturers who want to get in on the action. They'll probably also publish a performance spec that devs can use as a guide for @Charles' 'steam mode' - i.e., if you develop your game to meet these criteria, it's pretty much guaranteed to look good and perform well on any device that matches the Steambox reference spec.
Forgot my footnote: I mean that the drivers will be the nVidia/AMD proprietary ones, not that they'll be proprietary to Valve - as opposed to nouveau and whatever the open source implementation of fglrx is called (radeon?).
It depends on the individual application. The programs with which it plays nice run great on it, and there are quite a few of those out there, but there are also programs for which it doesn't work at all or requires some major tweaking to work. That last bit would play in with what Some Guy said, if it turns out to be true, as part of a Linux Steambox would probably be built-in Wine profiles for games that used it.
The Steam box isn't going to fight the Ouya...Ouya will be the steambox! They just need to convert the android Steam app to launch games and Big Picture mode.
I'd go with Steambox as that gets the whole STEAM name (which has a pretty good rep) out there and associated with a product. If it's possible to have the name of your product define what it does, that's generally a good thing if you're trying to create a new market.
I don't really see the plus in this for either current console gamers or Windows PC gamers (assuming the Linux base for the Valve system is correct). It's just more market fragmentation, more game versions and a possible decline of the core Windows gaming market if Valve uses their distribution system dominance to aggressively sell their new boxes. I'm already sick of things like the Dragonborn Skyrim DLC being restricted to the 360 for the first month or two of its shelf life, and now Valve could use their market share to force developers to make initial PC releases Steambox exclusive before being released to the wider PC market. All this for a "feature" I've been able to replicate with a laptop since 2006. Yay.
Any Steam box is just going to be a PC with its pre-loaded software set up with TVs and gamepads in mind. There's not going to be any differentiation between things being sold for desktop or living room.
That's a lot of extrapolation that's not likely at all. Valve's interest will never be in pushing the hardware, but the software. It wouldn't make sense for them to do anything other than continue to promote steam as a whole. An exclusive would only hurt them because it limits *their own income*.
The primary goal of a Steambox would be to displace consoles in living rooms. I see it as a logical step for Gabe to take with Microsoft's move to shift the future of Windows away from being an entirely open space with an emphasis on having the next-gen XBox being the target platform for major games development. Now would be the time to strike and expand the install base of users reliant on Steam as their distribution system of choice, as that incentivizes developers to aim to keep building games that will run and be sold through Steam. If you think about it, a hypothetical Steambox provides the entire library of Steam games all digitally distributed and chock full of great deals, feature parity with something like XBox Gold but at no cost, optional Mouse/Keyboard support using any basic USB devices you could want, and full access to the internet and all the various media streaming services that comes with. It's got a built-in audience of people already using Steam that might get one to use in their living room, and that feature set has got to be pretty compelling to folks that may game mainly on consoles now. They've been building up towards this for a long time now, and Big Picture was really the final piece of the puzzle to enable a slick wireless control UI via controller. The real question is why wouldn't they do this if they can work out a solid price point.
Ehhhh... not quite. I mean, it might have that effect, and that effect is certainly desireable, but the primary goal would be to expand adoption of Steam as a gaming platform, even beyond your own PC. It doesn't have to compete with the other consoles, even though it will, because the goal is to drive more developers to make software for Steam. What need to take over the console space explicitly when they can do so via attrition of software pricing?
I will be *very* surprised if Valve tries to sell this device for a profit. More likely they will aim to break even because steam sales themselves will more than make up for it in the long run.
It's not just software pricing. A big advantage of consoles is the standardized hardware, which means that you know for sure when you buy an Xbox 360 game that it will run on your Xbox 360. I wouldn't be surprised if Valve instituted some kind of certification process that lets devs put a little "Runs on Steambox" seal in the game's Steam listing. I don't think it'll be locked down like a console but it definitely does need some of the console trappings to really gain traction, I think.
That didn't stop Microsoft from developing the Xbox and not making much effort to bring flagship games to the PC. I assume Valve's view is that their digital distribution edge is going to be eroded both by PC-based competition (Microsoft's store, Origin, etc) and by improved digital offerings in the console world. I mean, I buy through Steam not because I'm a devotee of Valve but because I'm tired of boxed games and their DRM and because their prices kick the shit out of equivalent console prices. In a world where Origin doesn't suck and the 360/720 version of a PC digital game isn't $20 more, they need a different business model. That doesn't make a new console entry good for PC gaming though. I like things as they are right now - so cheap, so many games, so little crap to wade through in terms of DRM and the like. I want that to continue.
Whenever I think of PC "runs on this" type of certifications I always go back to this sad time in PC gaming:
Microsoft wasn't getting a cut of every game sold on PC, while Valve is getting a cut of every game sold on Steam. Apples and Oranges.
Based on this thread, Steambox is all things to all people! In reality, if Valve tried developing a console I suspect it'd be a dismal failure. Hardware development and support is just not inside their core competencies, which are digital distribution and taking a really really long time to make awesome games. While I'm sure they could crank out some hardware, their support story would likely end up being a nightmare (see: their total disdain for deadlines). It's one thing to say we'll take as long as it needs to get the next Half Life out the door, it's another thing when it's an API revision or something that Activision needs for the latest CoD game. When Activision has to delay CoDBLOPS 5 because Valve can't commit to an API feature set, that's it for Steambox. That being said, a more realistic route might be to go the OEM route some of you are proposing: Valve provides a reference platform and maybe an OS reskin. I still thing this would fail; I just don't see that anyone is clamoring for a third/fourth platform to develop for (three if you count 360/PC as one platform; four if you consider them separate. Oh, and I guess four/five if you count Wii, but nobody counts the Wii).
I agree, this more fleshes out what I was trying to get at - the long term consequence of having something like a Steambox sitting alongside an XBox is that it creates value propositions and spending decisions between the two that generally comes out with Steambox having an advantage. You're absolutely right that any displacement would be a gradual act of attrition - the immediate goal would just be expanding marketshare to a new place where more consumers have PC gaming options available as a realistic alternative by removing every barrier to entry aside from owning a single retail package that just works with the same stuff people already have in their homes. Retailers selling Steamboxes can push Steam gift cards, and there's always the option with major releases to sell digital Steam codes (and yeah, offer preorder bonuses and all that jazz) at the retail level to get the retailers onboard.
I'm curious if they could find a way to wrap this up as a stylish looking box and hit a $300-$400 price point. Maybe throw in a $100 credit to your Steam wallet as a way to subsidize the purchase and get people into the Steam ecosystem.
More likely they'd give you all valve games free or something; they can't give away other people's games without paying for them.
I still have some 'interactive CD-ROMs' from that era. Steam is all about games. The major lesson of this console generation is that the focus of consoles is shifting from just games to social interaction and streaming content. People expect all of these things from their handheld devices, and increasingly from their consoles. Obviously Steam has the community stuff, but it's still geared towards gaming.
