Valve Reportedly Working On 'Steam Box' Gaming Console

An anonymous reader writes "This article at the Verge claims that Valve is currently working on a way to bring Steam to the living room with its own gaming console. Quoting: 'According to sources, the company has been working on a hardware spec and associated software which would make up the backbone of a "Steam Box." The actual devices may be made by a variety of partners, and the software would be readily available to any company that wants to get in the game. Adding fuel to that fire is a rumor that the Alienware X51 may have been designed with an early spec of the system in mind, and will be retroactively upgradable to the software. Apparently meetings were held during CES to demo a hand-built version of the device to potential partners. We're told that the basic specs of the Steam Box include a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GPU. The devices will be able to run any standard PC titles, and will also allow for rival gaming services (like EA's Origin) to be loaded up. Part of the goal of establishing a baseline for hardware, we're told, is that it will give developers a clear lifecycle for their products, with changes possibly coming every three to four years. Additionally, there won't be a required devkit, and there will be no licensing fees to create software for the platform.'"

Comments

It better play the games I already own

[tedgyz]

I think this would be a great addition to the market, but if I can't carry over my PC catalog then it will be stillborn.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[Dyinobal]

I'm sure you'd be able to play all your games from Steam on this thing. It's not like Valve has ever discouraged people from playing their games across multiple computers.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[Nidi62]

As long as you can log into your Steam account through this, why wouldn't you be able to? That is after all the whole point of Steam, to be able to play your games anywhere but just logging into Steam and redownloading your game

Re:It better play the games I already own

[nine-times]

My understanding of the story is that essentially this will be a Windows computer with Steam installed. There are two major developments that this signals:

First, that Valve plans to start issuing a sort of standard system requirement for game developers to target, which is one of the benefits of consoles right now. Developers know what platform they're developing for when they develop a PS3 game, and when I buy a PS3 game I know it'll play on my PS3. If all Steam Boxes have the same system requirements, then you get the same benefit.

The other implication is that Valve must be developing Steam software suitable for use on a big screen tv. This is going to mean menu systems with large fonts that can be navigated with a remote, as well have controller/remote hardware to use with it.

I'm pretty optimistic about this. I've been ranting for years now about how Valve should develop a console.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[Ethanol-fueled]

So instead of trivially adapting your existing PC for display on a Big-screen, you feel compelled to shell out extra dollars for a piece of hardware, which is essentially another redundant PC, that you don't even need?

Perhaps valve should develop a "big-screen" version of their software and leave it up to the gamer to build or modify their boxes appropriately. If anybody knows how to build bitchin' rigs, it's gamers. And Alienware machines have been overpriced pieces of shit for a long time now.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[Anonymous Coward]

You are being silly - you are treating it like because they call it a console, it's magically different - they are talking about selling a PC with steam autoloading and with fixed specs. It'll run anything fine, and patching games for it will be as easy as with any PC.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[miknix]

As someone who never bought any dedicated gaming device (in exception to a GameBoy long long time ago), I would look forward to this if Steam provide their own dedicated operating system for the SteamBox. I'm a day-to-day GNU/Linux user which dual-boots into Windows 7 for gaming. One of the things I hate is having to care about antivirus and windows updates when *I just want to game*. Having Windows rebooting my computer automatically for a update when I'm in the middle of Portal is really annoying. I love Steam though, I like their game offers and associated publishers, I think its a great idea which simplifies the whole process of buying and installing a game and would certainly love to see that in a dedicated device.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[Joce640k]

Nope. This is obviously aimed at the current 'console gamers' who just want a box which plugs in and runs Steam with a minimum hardware spec for developers to work to.

Even the summary manages to say it, no need to read the article.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[dissy]

I think this would be a great addition to the market, but if I can't carry over my PC catalog then it will be stillborn.

You clearly have never used steam before! (Which prompts the question: What catalog?)

Anywhere you install Steam, you can sign into your account and download games you have purchased. All you need to remember is your Steam ID and password, and it will show your library of games. You can install any or all of them.

This is one of the biggest features Steam provides, to make it easy to manage your library from anywhere.

As the article clearly states, this is just a PC inside, and will not be locked down such as the xbox, nor require any special devkit. Only the PC case will be designed for the living room (Which has been done before) and will come with game pads.
Being a regular PC with a regular OS and regular Steam client, it should have all of the regular features Steam has.

Being a regular PC, one would even imagine a bunch of front USB ports, in addition to the internal USB wireless dongle for their own controllers. It should work equally well with a keyboard and mouse as it does with a wired game pad, which is one of the reasons I don't like current generation consoles. A lot of people prefer keyboard/mouse over game pad, despite both being available on PC. This should cater well to everyone.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[nine-times]

So instead of trivially adapting your existing PC for display on a Big-screen, you feel compelled to shell out extra dollars for a piece of hardware, which is essentially another redundant PC, that you don't even need?

Well no, if you already have a good gaming rig, then you don't need to buy a new one. I don't think Valve is asking you to, either. There are hints, at least, that this will be more a set of standardized specs than a particular hardware console. As I said, I think what Valve is really doing is setting a standard set of requirements for gaming PCs. So in this scheme, you can buy a gaming PC that's "Steambox certified" (or whatever), and then in the Steam store, you'll be able to see that games are designed to run on all "Steambox certified" hardware.

It won't prevent you from running the same games on another computer, but it will make it so developers have a consistent hardware platform to target, and so gamers basically won't need to think about system requirements for each game. If games are developed/optimized for a 2012 Steambox and you have a 2012 model Steambox, then you know that it'll play well.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[hjf]

Well, a console doesn't run standard PC titles, but you develop for XBOX 360 with Visual Studio and XNA. Compile, download to console, and play.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[thetoadwarrior]

What is stopping you from creating your own "steam box" now? Valve is developing a big screen mode for the whole purpose of being about to build your own steam box. But as someone who already uses Steam on a 40" HDTV it works fine as is imo.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[Anonymous Coward]

You're taking the comment out of context.

MPC1 and MPC2 were standards for Windows Multimedia
PC97/98/99/2001 were also standards for Windows.

Prior to 1997 (AC97 standard), sound cards either came with windows drivers and "sound blaster compatible mode" under dos, or no dos support at all. From 1994 to 1997, some sound cards came with Windows 95 drivers that enabled sound blaster support... under Windows 95. No support under DOS.

A lot of the problems with the sound cards prior to AC97 were a result of mutually incompatible MIDI standards, ultimately with Windows coming with a low quality roland sample set around the time of DirectX5. Up to this point, most games were designed for MIDI because the only alternative was redbook audio streaming from the CD-ROM.

Once computers became powerful enough to play mp3's, midi's were wholesale dumped and few games since even try to use the MIDI hardware, and it's all done in software now. All games that use midi now sound the same because they use the Windows Roland sample set. If you play the same game on the Mac (if it was even released for it) Quicktime has a different set. You can hear the difference if you have the Quicktime plugin installed. Play it once on Quicktime and then play it once with windows media player.

Anyway that's my soapbox complaint about standards bleed. Hardware manufacturers don't give a crap about how well they conform to a standard as long as they sell more hardware. Just look at how much fragmentation there is with Android. None of these manufacturers care if a newer version of the operating system comes out.

If Valve really wants to create a viable standard, they would have to make the software discover if it meets the requirements, not relying on the hardware manufacturer at all. They will cheat the benchmarks. The Steam software could do this by running a benchmark, or comparing the hardware detected with previous hardware and driver configurations and notify the user if the system hardware is unusable. Like most laptops are sold with the onboard Intel graphics which are a joke. Few laptops can be used to play anything newer than 5 year old games. It is like the minimum requirements are "does it play WoW? Yes, good ship that..."

Re:It better play the games I already own

[Anthony Mouse]

My understanding of the story is that essentially this will be a Windows computer with Steam installed.

Is there any inherent reason why it would have to be Windows? If you're going for the console market, i.e. not worried about people needing legacy productivity software, what sense does it make to pay the Microsoft tax? Certainly Sony and Nintendo don't do it, and even Microsoft doesn't run the same operating system on XBOX as they do on PCs.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[SScorpio]

We're already stuck, the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are extremely outdated, and a five year old PC is more powerful than either of them. The upside is that you can still place games at a comfortable quality settings on a five year old PC.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[SScorpio]

You really haven't used a game console in a while. For a PS3 and sometimes a Xbox 360 occasional usage is like this.

1) Start the console and what through the overly long boot animation
2) Wait for it to connect to the gaming network
3) Have it disconnect from the gaming network and tell you, your console needs an update and won't go online without it
4) Download the udpate, wait for it to install, and reboot your console
5) After the console starts back up launch the game, to have it tell you there is a required update for the game
6) Wait for the update to download and install
7) Finally play the game

This process is even worse if you are playing a game you haven't played before normally there is an automatic installation process you have to wait 10-15 minutes for. And that's after all of the updates it installs one by one.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[Narishma]

Gaming doesn't "live and die on the bleeding edge" like you say. If the huge popularity of consoles and flash games isn't obvious enough, you just have to take a look at the most played games on Steam and you'll see none of them requires high end machines.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[J-1000]

You forgot to mention that Valve will have its box for sale, and its form factor and default software will be tailor made for TV use. The UI will probably be centered around a game pad. So not only do you have the specs, you have a marketable product.

And to reinforce what you already said: To the non-technical, buying a gaming PC is tricky. Countless people have no doubt been burned whey they bought a $300 PC hoping it would play the latest games, only to be disappointed when their on-board video card turned everything into a slide show. Or maybe they listened to the salesman at Best Buy who convinced them that to really play games smoothly they were going to have to drop at least $1,500. So you could deal with all that mess, or you could spend $300 on an XBox and KNOW you're good to go. Valve knows that if buying a gaming PC were as easy as buying an XBox that they could potentially see a lot more customers.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[shutdown -p now]

Microsoft wouldn't have much say over this; after all, in the end, it's a PC like any other, just advertised as a gaming console, and pre-configured for that purpose. Discriminating OEMs over the intended purpose of equipment that they sell would not look well in any anti-monopoly hearing, too (especially given that this was a point that was brought up back during antitrust investigation in US).

Re:It better play the games I already own

[shutdown -p now]

So you can't see that this is a blatant stepping-stone toward a Closed Platform and Vendor Lock-In?

This coming from a guy named "macs4all" is pretty ironic.

But, no, I don't see that. More importantly, I don't see the point of doing so for Valve. They're doing very well by covering their present niche, which is PC and Mac gaming. They already have some lock-in, in a sense that a game you buy from Steam needs Steam to run. Aside from that, they have not shown any signs of restricting your hardware and OS choices - if anything, they're diversifying them, since the release of Steam on OS X (which lets you download and run games on Mac that you have previously purchased on PC!).

This move is, quite obviously, an attempt to diversify further by also taking over a slice of the console market. What's sinister about it?

Re:It better play the games I already own

[shutdown -p now]

The goal would be to get the entire library of Steam games to run on that console from day 1. It's also easier for the developers if they have, essentially, one platform to target for both PC and console.

Anyway, judging from the listed specs, this is not a low-end rig by any measure, meaning that it will already be priced noticeably higher than competitors - so $30 (or whatever it is these days?) for OEM Windows is not likely to make a big difference. They'll probably position it as a console for high-end gaming - in terms of eye candy, it can certainly beat any current-gen console by a considerable margin, especially on a Full HD TV where high-res will be very visible.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[shutdown -p now]

Well, I was trying to be above all that ad hominem crap; but I forgot this is Slashdot...

Chill down. It was hard not to rise to the bait like that. ~

Unless I am drastically wrong, maintaining these Steam variants isn't screwing with Developers of "Steam-Compatible" games (isn't Steam just a cross-platform API, much like Qt or (ewww!) Flash?). It's really only Valve that is feeling the pain of multiple Steam platforms, right? (I admit to knowing nothing about developing for Steam). Otherwise, how could have Valve's catalog been instantly available to OS X users just because "Steam" itself was ported?

The short answers are: you're wrong; wrong; and it isn't.

To begin with, the entire Steam catalog is not available on OS X. Only those games which developers have elected to port to OS X are there - though porting Steam was itself a pretty strong push for game publishers to consider such porting, which is why it has a decent selection now - GTA, Civilization etc. Then, of course, Valve also helped by porting its own engine and games that use it.

Steam is not a cross-platform API for games. It is a platform for game distribution, but it cares nothing about how your game is actually implemented in terms of graphics, sound etc. It does give you some APIs to enable Steam's DRM, and also (optionally) to do stuff like achievements, cloud storage for configs and savegames, Steam friend system etc - but nothing to help you write a cross-platform engine.

That's precisely why the console runs Windows and not some kind of Linux-based embedded thingy - because most games in Steam catalog are still Windows only, and so are most new titles.

Re:It better play the games I already own

[macs4all]

Not necessarily. The advantage of consoles is that they get to be sold at a loss, since those costs are subsidized by the money the companies make off the video games. A Steam console seems like a pretty good way to give a good gaming experience to those who can't afford a computer with the same specs.

I'm sorry, did I miss a mention of price?

Re:It better play the games I already own

[jseale]

Account access is one thing, game compatibility is yet another. I'm sure Steam's auths are going to LOVE porting their games to a TV-viewable format. And for that matter, some of Steam's games have keyboard controls. If we're talking about a Bluetooth keyboard here, offering one of those with the gaming system would be expensive (unless companies like Nyko and MadCatz offered them).

Re:It better play the games I already own

[JimboFBX]

You could have graphics cards on a 2 year lifecycle and have the game automatically pick the quality based on the one detected. Virtually every game no-adays can run on graphics cards older than 4 years, just it doesn't look as good as it could.

I think the main purpose for this is to simplify hardware requirements for a PC. "I have a steamBox 1" is simple, you make games and you say "compatible with steambox 1 or higher". Likewise, it ensures that nobody does stuff something stupid like skimp on dirt cheap RAM then wonder why the game plays like crap.

Add a controller and mouse and keyboard support and you got something spiffy. Still waiting on someone to make a wireless mouse/keyboard capable of the high resolution you get from a wired device. Right now I have USB extension cords strung across my living room and a mouse and keyboard on my ottoman with a high end computer hooked up to a 65" 3d TV.

Steam Box AKA

[wisnoskij]

AKA a windows computer hooked up to a TV and with many software blocks in place to prevent general computer like use.

Re:Steam Box AKA

[Dyinobal]

and you think that is different from the xbox how?

Multiple logins and players on a single account

[Xian97]

What if I want to play a game on my Steam account on the PC and the kids want to play a different game at the same time on the Steam Console? Since the majority of my gaming is done on Steam on the PC these days, we would never be able to play different games on two devices at the same time since Steam only allows a single active login.

What about multiple players on the same console? They are going to have to come up with a family setting, because if it is just a single login allowed then my kids will be complaining about who gets the achievements and such, and I am not going to buy multiple versions of the same game for each account on the console.

Re:Multiple logins and players on a single account

[mrsmiggs]

By putting a steam box under the tv they are moving out of the basement and into family life. Like it or not if valve want this to be a success beyond the rich poser demographic they are going to have to adapt to family life and that means sharing and probably censorship control for parents.

Not sure this will work...

[CptSpatula]

What this reminds me of is 3DO. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D0 for reference. I'm not sure if they'll be able to pull this off. The hardware will be too expensive, limiting the market share. Multiple vendors make for a muddle too. Also, why spend a bunch of money on a Valve box when you can just buy a cheaper off the shelf pc? It's not like I don't want to share being part of the glorious PC gaming master race, I'm just not sure Valve can pull this off.

Standardisation

[Retron]

Yes, it's just a PC-in-a-box. However, this is something a bit more interesting in that at long last it'd set a more modern minimum spec for games. For too long PC games have been crippled graphically, as no games maker wants to lose out on the Windows XP-with-DX9 graphics crowd. If enough of these boxes are shifted it would work to further PC games in terms of graphics, as developers could assume a certain minimum level - and I'd wager it wouldn't be crusty old DX9-level graphics.

As a bonus, everyone who has a decent gaming PC already would stand to benefit from a larger pool of developers and games.

Things like this have been tried before, however. Remember MPC and MPC2? They quickly fizzled out, as did use of the Experience Index that's present in consumer versions of Windows from Vista onwards.

The main fly in the ointment is likely to be cost, however. i7s are around £230 alone in the UK and a decent midrange graphics card (like the GTX560) is another £120. A PS3 is cheaper than an i7 CPU, around £190.

Re:No more stuff in my entertainment center please

[SScorpio]

Depending on your setup you will need a power cable and HDMI cable to carry both audio and video. Network access could be via WiFi and wireless input devices.

If Valve keeps the platform open maybe something like XBMC could be easily packaged for deployment. Then it would need some type of remote input, but you could toss the POS Apple TV that can't output 1080p and have a nice all in one HTPC that doubles as a high powered gaming rig.

Game neutering

[devphaeton]

My only concern for this is that Steam (one of the major forces in PC gaming) moving this direction will discourage Desktop PC game development. Instead of creating games for the latest PC hardware, developers will focus on the 'sure thing' of the Steam Box. We all know the difference in graphics, processing and gameplay between PC and console games of the same title.

The specs of the Steam Box are respectable now (my main PC doesn't have an i7, for instance) but in a few years its specs will be merely 'ok', and I'm not optimistic about being able to upgrade video components, ram or processing capabilities on it without major headaches.

Let me know when the Apple TV has games

[tepples]

Right now all I have is my apple tv and TV.

Let me know when the Apple TV has games like the other iOS devices. If games aren't "worth it" to you, then you aren't the target audience. Next story.

Re:really valve?

[lattyware]

The point is that most people don't have a PC good enough, and don't like the idea of not being sure if a game will run. You get a steam box and you plug it into your TV (most people don't want to play on their small monitor or move a PC around, hell, most don't have an HDMI port and most people don't know DVI->HDMI is easy) and you load up the browser, and can play any game with 'works on steambox v1.0' stamped on it, and know it'll work, just like with a console, at a similar price point to a console.

No, it's not for people who are currently PC gamers, it's to try and make PC gaming viable to the console crowd, because then Valve don't have to play nice with M$, Sony and Nintendo to get their games to them. It makes complete sense, and is actually a really good idea. Why create an open console platform when we already have one - the PC.

Hm..

[PessimysticRaven]

I'm a self-professed PC elitist. I've run through about every console system that's out there or been (I miss the Dreamcast, dammit..And the Saturn, oddly, but that was a Spring Break one-night-stand with itching and burning as the result), but I already have a kick-ass gaming rig, thanks! I like the idea of another choice among the Big Three, though.

Now... Am I the only person that would like to see a "Steam Games" sectional next to Nintendo and Sony in stores, though? I still like physical media, in some regard; I can't be the only one.

It's a windows PC

[thetoadwarrior]

Valve rarely fucks up but my concern is that this is the first time they will. If it can play all my existing games then it's a windows PC dressed up as a console. At worst that means you get all the hassle of PC gaming with the lock down of console gaming. At best it's just a windows PC in a customised case.

Either way I can't see the point of it. Steam works fine as is on HDTVs. If people want to do that they can do it already.

I don't want to live on this planet anymore!

[SICKECHO]

I love Valve, I love Steam as a PC distribution platform. However we don't need another reason for developers to exclusively develop for consoles, or in some cases write the code for the consoles and make a shitty port for PC's which is often done. I hope PC's will still have companies developing games for them, certainly the indie developers will keep making games for PC because it's such an easy platform to distribute and test such games. Any thoughts?

Why do I need this?

[shoehornjob]

My computer has all of those things and more. Why do I need to have some console attached to my tv for gaming. From Steam's perspective I suppose it makes sense. They are already a pretty big player in the gaming community so why not take a piece of Sony and Microsoft's action. I'm kind of interested to see if they can make a go of it though.

Valve has a long way to go.

[nickmalthus]

I tried to make my own Steam gaming box as a part of the HTPC I built over the Christmas break. First, Valve has not delivered the Steam Big Picture mode which it promised a year ago (!). This means you need to use the native Windows application navigation with small fonts that even on a big HDTV it is difficult to read and navigate. Next Steam just acts as wrapper to native Windows games so there are still installer/update issues. As my first effort I tried to get Mass Effect 1 to run on my HDTV through steam and spent a couple of hours trying to determine why the launcher would silently die. It turns out I needed to manually download a patch from EA that Steam did not automatically include and apply it along with setting the game launcher to run as administrator. Not very user friendly at all. Then, I find out that on the PC Bioware/EA crippled game controller support for Mass Effect since they want you to buy the XBox 360 version for that so it only supports native mouse/keyboard. I had to buy a third party utility, xpadder, and manually create an control schema myself that works OK with a wireless 360 controller.

With all that said, I will continue to use Steam as a lower end cloud based backup service for buying bargain games future proofed against console obsolescence. Beyond that, Steam still requires all the PC gaming overhead of troubleshooting/patching/driver updates and probably will never provide the plug and play experience the polished consoles can.