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Valve's Big Picture Could Be a Linux Game Console
Penurious Penguin writes that "a hopeful article at The Verge persuasively suggests that through Valve, Linux could soon become a formidable contender in the gaming arena, capable of holding its own against such giants as Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and the Wii. With 50 million users, a growing Linux team, a caboodle of interesting experiments ('Steam Box' hardware baselines, etc.) and a strong conviction that more-open platforms are the way, Valve may actually see it through."
"The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii are nearing their end. As powerful as they have been in the living room, gamers want more."
Quoted from TFA. Am I the only one who wants LESS? I don't really want my game system to do 9 million things. I just want it to play games.
Then again, when was the last time we were actually listened to? Draconian DRM, the removal of OtherOS, etc...
Okay, perfectly serious question, and one the game developers and studios are going to ask you: How are you going to protect against piracy if the platform is open? Explain how if it's made trivially-easy for people to download and pirate the games, how their revenue stream benefits from this... because open platforms encourage piracy. Or at least, that's the argument that's going to be made.
Please guys, serious answers only, not a giant flag of a penguin and patriotic music playing while you explain in great detail why open is better, etc. Pretend I'm a game developer and sell me on the concept. You can start by telling me how it'll be at least as profitable, if not more so, than the competitors. I don't care about linux, or the GPL, or open source: I want a business case made.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
For years I dreamed about a Linux distro with all the fat out but the bare minimum to run games, so we can get all the power from the hardware. I really hope this can become real but I`m well aware of the hurdles they will face to get to that.
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
How is it trolling to ask a question that any developer who's going to give serious consideration to this platform is going to ask? The console market thrives mostly on store-bought purchases, many of which are recycled into the used-games market a year after their release, but 95% of the games aren't pirated. The PC gaming market, on the other hand, is almost the exact opposite: Most games, especially single-player games, sitting on PCs are pirated. So to get the same profit, you'd have to sell games for this console either at about 20 times the volume or 20 times the profit margin, to make up the difference.
This is math guys. It's business. I'm making no arguments as to technical feasibility of producing such a console, but one of the reasons for the success of the PS3 and one reason so many developed for it was because it had strong DRM: If you wanted to play a game on the PS3, you either had to buy it, or go through convoluted steps or modify the hardware in ways that often left you unable to use that console online for multiplayer games. Every console marketed in the last decade has tried to follow the same business model.
Now you have Valve coming along with a new, untested, business model. The burden of proving feasibility is on them; And I really, truly, and sincerely want to know what their argument is either for limiting piracy on their platform or describing how it won't affect sales or the profitability of games developed for the console. It is not trolling to point out a legitimate concern about an untested and unproven business model in an industry where game development costs many millions and the industry itself is prone to failure. Look at the (very) long list of failed games and gaming companies. Entertainment is a risky business.
So the question has to be answered, solidly, how those risks are mitigated. Not. A. Troll.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Now is probably the best time that Valve could release a console: get first mover status in North America against MS & Sony and probably Europe as well. But valve is a software company. Their experience with manufacturing, shipping, retailers, etc is limited at best. The boxed copies of Valve games are published by one of the traditional large publishers. I love valve as much as the next fan boy but the massive operational organization that is needed to support a console launch is slightly outside of their reach. Valve could partner with a distribution/manufacturing partner but the people that have experience in the entertainment space and who would be able to accomplish the undertaking is a pretty short list. EA could probably swing it and would scare both MS & Sony as their consoles would lose EA's games but with origin vs steam on the PC side of things I see this as slightly unlikely. I'd love Sega to make a Steam box, but that's simply nostalgia talking. Sony is the most likely partner as steam is already on PS3 (for some definition of steam) and ps3 runs a version of unix, but it would probably be another wedge between Sony & retail stores.
More then likely this is probably valve's experimentation into console space. They'll probably stream line it so that it's trivial to get your home linux machine to output to hdmi at the push of a controller button. Once the home experience is as simple as it can get then they'll make a business case for releasing their own console or not based upon revenue. Look at what valve has done with micro-transactions, free to play games, crowd sourcing, and non-game software: they dip a toe into the water and then once they're confident they move into that space.
You can thank Microsoft for that. Why would someone buy from a third party when you can buy games from the store built into the operating system? Valve is running scared because they see their biggest revenue stream drying up.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
You can thank Microsoft for that. Why would someone buy from a third party when you can buy games from the store built into the operating system? Valve is running scared because they see their biggest revenue stream drying up.
Why? Because the last thing like this (windows live games) was a complete pos.
GENERATION 9882463: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig & add a random number to the generation.
Joel Spolsky coined the term "Commoditize your complements" ten years ago. Steam, who sells software, wants consoles (or PCs acting as consoles) to be as cheap as possible, so as many people as possible can afford to have hardware that will run their games.
Every product in the marketplace has substitutes and complements. A substitute is another product you might buy if the first product is too expensive. Chicken is a substitute for beef. If you're a chicken farmer and the price of beef goes up, the people will want more chicken, and you will sell more.
A complement is a product that you usually buy together with another product. Gas and cars are complements. Computer hardware is a classic complement of computer operating systems...
All else being equal, demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease... why don't the video chip vendors of the world try to commoditize the games, somehow? That' s a lot harder. If the game Halo is selling like crazy, it doesn't really have any substitutes. You're not going to go to the movie theatre to see Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and decide instead that you would be satisfied with a Woody Allen movie. They may both be great movies, but they're not perfect substitutes. Now: who would you rather be, a game publisher or a video chip vendor?
Now that the cheapest hardware out there is ridiculously capable, of course Steam wants you to throw a free OS on there and turn it into a Steam appliance. Which can also browse the web, play videos, send emails, make Skype calls, etc etc etc.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Microsoft doesn't have to deliver a great solution, just something good enough that Windows users don't look for alternatives. That's the advantage you have when your solution is included with every install of the OS and your OS is a monopoly in its market.
The question will be if Steam and other stores have enough of a following to do what Netscape could not and ride out the anti-competitive maneuvers MSFT will make.
People still use Steam?
As of this second, three million, two hundred and fifty-four thousand, seven hundred and seventy-three Steam users are online. They've peaked over five million. So yes, a lot of people "still" use Steam.
Always late with patches.
Can you give a citation there? I've never noticed them be particularly late to patch a game - in fact, they seem to do so faster than PSN/XBox Live. It probably does vary quite a bit depending on the game, though.
Their wrapper often breaks games or adds instability.
Another citation, if you would, please? I've only noticed that (rarely) with the Steam Overlay, which is easily disabled (both globally and on a per-game basis). And even then, all it did for me was kick me off some BF2 servers as a "cheat".
Customer service is non-existent.
While I haven't personally ever needed to speak to them, the reputation of Steam's customer service seems to have improved greatly over the years. I know back around 2006 or so they had a horrible reputation, but it's been years since I heard any complaints (a sharp contrast to Origin or Blizzard, in particular).
Yeah no there are plenty of other options for buying/downloading legitimate games online.
And you're welcome to use them. But how many of them are even thinking about Linux support?
Good luck with the linux project. I want nothing to do with Steam.
And you felt the need to shout that out for everyone to hear? Makes me wonder if you ever actually used it.
In a perfect world Microsoft would not exist, or where a different company.
But the Microsoft that exist fight standards, and create propietery protocols or closed programs, and created huge dependencies for these, so people with one of his programs must buy the others. Microsoft fiery defend other companies, but not on quality, but on poisoning the well.
OpenGL was one of the key pieces to code a game once, and play it everywhere, and Microsoft succefully made it secondary with Direct3D. It has continued fighting all standards, to destroy them, and in games have a unmitigated success. Games are a world of Microsoft libraries, and game dev's don't know how to build games withouth these libraries, and the games created don't withouth these libraries (or libraries that emulated them).
At this point Microsoft is a cerebral parasite, and removing it would kill the host.
-Woof woof woof!
net based games, theres udp traffic.
many players at once, theres bluetooth controller traffic.
background downloading = more os tasks
plus because its linux, you can develop your games on a real pc too with nvidia hardware i guess.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.