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About LinkBacksDon't be silly. This is for casual stuff in front of the TV, not real gamingOriginally Posted by Terbinator
Don't be silly. This is for casual stuff in front of the TV, not real gaming
I suspect one way to cut costs is to use a hybrid HDD??
Cluster all these boxes!
Yeah good point, I think I said in another thread about these that hybrid actually makes perfect sense in a console, caching the OS and your current favourite game or two, even more so than a desktop because the data access is going to be quite sameish.
Sounds promising, but cost is the issue if they want to attract the masses.
There are going to be multiple different steam boxes developed by third parties. Valve said they would also be developing their own box. This is most likely a third party unit and not valves own unit.
What worries me is the usage of linux which will restrict us to only a handful of games from the steam store(I guess windows versions must ship too)
http://kotaku.com/5974204/valve-says-piston-is-just-one-of-multiple-hardware-prototypes
A gaming machine you can attach to your TV, do your homework on, edit video or music... Reminds me of the AMIGA. Convince parents they should spend £500 on this rather than a PS4 or iPad for their kids, sell it in (what's left of) electrical retailers and your onto a winner.
Reality is it will be overpriced - if people want value for money they'll get a normal PC. If they want style at a premium a mac.
Shame.
I can see noise being one of the biggest problems with this.
So say £500 with Valves help around £150 more than the new Xbox and PS4 (speculation I know). At first looks it might seem to be a bit out but what with Linux steam client, better HTPC/server credentials etc we might just have a Fight on our hands here. If nothing else it might keep Sony and MS in the land of the sane on pricing for their new boxes.
Where's the storage on that thing ... maybe a built in Msata but at 1Tb that would be expensive!
Why not? okay AMD cpu's aren't as good as the current Intel crop, but they're still more than capable. AMD graphics cards seem to be pretty well respected. Not sure about the Trinity parts though - heard mixed opinions on them, e.g. someone saying that they're just better than the Intel bundled equivalents - which is faint praise indeed in my book.
How about a combination of SSD and HDD - there's caching solutions out there that could be used. Although personally I can't see why a console that supports USB drives too needs 1TB of storage. A striped pair of 256MB SSD's (which would be relatively cheap) surely would be enough for most peoples needs? (Remember Linux OS's are usually pretty small footprints)
No! As has been said earlier on the same topic if you've got a Windows-based Steambox then actually what you've got is a PC running Steam. So that means larger OS footprint (although some stripping could be done I'll admit) and more importantly license and control issues (although Ubuntu is a commercial product too at least it'd be easy to fork if Cannonical decided to take it in a weird direction because source code is available). The other aspect of this is that if the basis is an open source product then I'm guessing/hoping that it'll be possible to get the OS and apply it to your own hardware. So if you don't like the Steambox specifications then there'd be nothing to prevent you doing your own, more-capable device.What worries me is the usage of linux which will restrict us to only a handful of games from the steam store
Also the "handful of games" accusation applies to any startup (which this is). I remember hearing the same accusation against Android and I'm sure the iTunes app store also had that charge thrown at it in the early days. To me at least, if Valve can persuade one of the big publishers to come on board then it's got a good chance. Remember that the big budget titles are on PC, PS4, XBox and in some cases Wii too, in which case a Linux port would be exactly that - just another port.
Totally disagree. First off there's no hard and fast price been quoted. As noted in other posts in this thread, if Valve dive into this then economies of scale will apply and the price could be on the upper end of reasonable ... but then again I'm guessing about this as much as you are!
Secondly to say that if you want a stylish PC then it has to be a Mac is also not the case. There's laptop and ultrabook designs from all of the major manufacturers that I'll argue strongly are just as "stylish" as the MBP's etc, and in some cases are actually better looking. Okay, downside is that they're also expensive, but as you hint yourself, in this area being "stylish" gives an expectation of premium pricing.
The design shown in the article's illustrations looks reasonable to me. Then again I thought the XBox Slim was a nice looking design, so what do I know?!
Career status: still enjoying my new career in DevOps, but it's keeping me busy...
By loosing windows you will be loosing a whole backlog of steam titles. Instead of launching with 10 or so titles it could launch with 1000's. Lets not forget most people who are interested in pc gaming already have a steam account with games (I have around 300 games on my account which I wouldnt want to lose).
How much does an oem license of windows cost a manufacturer these days anyway? £30-40 per unit (guess of bulk oem price)? - it seems little cost for the gains which would be had.
I do like the look of this, I'll reserve judgement until I've read a few reviews though...
You've managed to overlook that the "SteamBox" appears to be positioned as a "gaming appliance" not as a cheap way to get a PC!So stop thinking "PC" and start thinking "console".
With a console you're talking about effectively an "embedded" use of the OS which, unless I'm much mistaken, means you can't just slap on a copy of Windows7/8 OEM and say "there you go". You'd need to strip out content and lock down other bits, and that's assuming that desktop Windows is suitable for use in an embedded mode to start with. Based on my experiences I'd suggest that launching a Windows-based console would be a crazy decision ... unless perhaps you're talking about WinMo perhaps. But then again a WinMo based console has the same "lack of content" issues as a Linux one would.
Linux, on the other hand, has a very good track record for being used in the embedded space. And the work that's being done with Ubuntu on various RPi-based projects alone shows that it's not necessarily a dumb choice.
There's also the small matter that while a Windows OEM license may be <£40 I can't see Microsoft being particularly happy to "encourage" a potential competitor to their XBox product line. In which case either the pricing terms may be disadvantageous or there may be restrictions placed on use.
What we don't know though is how aggressive Valve are going to be in encouraging developers to get in on this thing. Ideally (because I'd like it to succeed) I'd like to see a lot of effort going into developer relations to capitalize on the enthusiasm that the potential customers seem to have for this platform.
Personally if I had 300 titles in Steam then I'd be sticking with Steam on PC and wouldn't even be considering a SteamBox.
Career status: still enjoying my new career in DevOps, but it's keeping me busy...
Well spot the people who have bought in to it.
These guys have been punting their form factor thing for ages. No one cares. It's expensive, slow and noisy.
How are they going to compete with Microsoft or Sony who are going 'all in' so to speak on the hardware, selling it often at below cost.
Not to mention games are already being written for the new xbox if only a handful of the leaks are to be believed.
So who would buy one of these? They are going to cost too much for an HTPC, cost more than a console (probably!) with lesser quality graphics of games.
The casual gamer will just use their fondleslab/jabphone, the more hardcore will want an xbox, and those who find console games/gamers moronic will just use a PC, you know a proper one, thats fast, not a pile of poo to upgrade.
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What do people think the community will be like online?
If they replace PS3s and Xboxes, can you imagine the amount of screaming 12 year olds trying to use their wired Xbox controller against keyboard/mouse players?
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