Valve's SteamBox Gets a Name and an Early Demo at CES

xynopsis writes "Looks like the final version of the Linux based Steam Gaming Console has been made public at CES. The result of combined efforts of small-form-factor maker Xi3 and Valve, the gaming box named 'Piston' is a potential game changer in transforming the Linux desktop and gaming market. The pretty device looks like a shrunk Tezro from Silicon Graphics when SGI used to be cool." Looks like Gabe Newell wasn't kidding.

Comments

Never thought i would see

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux, games and gamechanger in the same paragraph, looks cool though. Would be cool.

Re:Never thought i would see

[cod3r_]

yeah that xi3 box is actually pretty cool. I think there is some "yet to be released" info though about them because I looked at them a while back and no way they run games very well as they were then. Could be cool though steam could really help to move the market towards more linux gaming which would be massive for the linux desktop.

Re:Never thought i would see

[ByOhTek]

It could bring Linux to the desktop for the casual (web client only) user - i.e. a lot of users. But there'd be a lot more users who'd still want a dedicated Mac or PC.

However, by grabbing the dedicated web-client-only users, it would make an expansion market for a lot of software vendors. It could be the in-road Linux needs to get the desktop... Now that the desktop/notebook is being supplanted by the tablet.

My question is... Will I be able to run FreeBSD on it? It could make a nice little server, depending on the price/performance of the hardware.

Re:Never thought i would see

[SomePgmr]

Article says you can buy an Xi3 now if you want to put FreeBSD on it. Looks like they start at about $500.

Interview with Gabe Newell linked in summary discusses how theirs is meant to be a locked-down console, not a general purpose PC.

Re:Never thought i would see

[Gaygirlie]

Could be cool though steam could really help to move the market towards more linux gaming which would be massive for the linux desktop.

The problem, though, is that there is no actually good desktop environment for Linux.

Re:Never thought i would see

[MistrBlank]

That is an unqualified opinion. No "good" desktop for what? For games? There's isn't because linux as a game platform has been largely non-existent. But there are plenty of environments with minimalistic UIs that could be good and I think that's what Valve is building here. I'd argue that there's no good desktop environment for gaming, period. Windows just is not and never has been a good gaming environment either, it's just the defacto desktop OS.

If this moves developers to make ports of their games for Linux more and more, I think you'll see people playing less and less on Windows as they'll have the option to run on a "free" alternative. This is good for the hobbyist market.

Re:Never thought i would see

[Cinder6]

Steam's "Big Screen" mode is actually pretty good. I won't be surprised if that's what the SteamBox winds up running.

Re:Never thought i would see

[lordofthechia]

From the cached version of the (now slashdotted) site:

the X7A Modular Computer packs a real wallop, especially for a machine roughly the size of a grapefruit that draws a mere 40Watts of power.

The X7A Modular Computer is available with up to

        A quad-core 64-bit, x86-based 32nm processor running at up to 3.2GHz (with 4MB of Level2 Cache),
        An integrated graphics processor (GPU) containing up to 384 programmable graphics cores (or shaders),
        4GB—8GB of DDR3 RAM,
        64GB—1TB of internal solid-state SSD storage (with up to 12Gbps throughput speeds),
        Three display ports providing maximum resolution of 4096x2160 (including 1 DisplayPort v1.2 and 2 Mini-DisplayPorts v1.2),
        Four eSATAp 3.0 ports,
        Four USB 3.0 ports,
        Four USB 2.0 ports,
        1Gb Ethernet port, and
        Three audio ports (1 input and 2 outputs: 1 copper and 1 optical).

Designed to be used as a standalone machine or in clustered configurations, the X7A will run any x86-based Operating System, including Windows 8 and lower, Linux, UNIX, etc. Prices for quad-core versions of the X7A Modular Computer will begin at $1,100, with General Availability starting in February 2013.

Re:Never thought i would see

[Nyder]

Steam's "Big Screen" mode is actually pretty good. I won't be surprised if that's what the SteamBox winds up running.

What? Wow, no shit that is what they are going to be running. It was said when they made it.

Re:Never thought i would see

[Cinder6]

Yeah, I worded that like an idiot, didn't I?

Re:Never thought i would see

[Nyder]

Yeah, I worded that like an idiot, didn't I?

naw, i'm just in an aggressive mood today so far. I'm being a dick.

Re:Never thought i would see

[Anonymous Coward]

Valve Pissed In what?

Re:Never thought i would see

[cheesybagel]

The specs seem ok but $1k is pretty steep to pay for a glorified console. I suspect their sub $500 model would get more traction.

Proprietary software

[Anonymous Coward]

The year of GNU/Linux on the console (GNU/Piston)

Nope, ain't happening

[crazyjj]

offer modular component updates, including the option to upgrade the PC's CPU and RAM.

I will *not* get back into that chase again, thank you very much. The whole reason I left PC gaming years ago was because I got tired of the specs chase. Consoles meant never having to look on the box and see if I needed yet another upgrade to play a game. I've even still got the stack of old video cards and MB's to remind me of how much money I wasted back then.

Not going back to that. And if I was, I would just build my own PC and connect it to my TV (why bother with Valve's box?). After all, if I'm going back to the chase, may as well get the freedom of a PC too.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[slashmydots]

You must not have known what you were doing or something. My PC is 2 years old and it's still fast enough to run any modern game at medium to maxed specs at 1920x1080 while running Netflix in HD on monitor 2. It cost about $790. The constant need for new requirements in "console" games would piss people off though. With an Xbox, once you've got the hardware, you're good. If you constantly have to buy expensive games plus new hardware, that's just stupid. I would make it mandatory for any game on Steam that wants to be console-capable to have a "Piston mode" that is guaranteed to run properly on their hardware as-is.

Since I know someone will ask....
i5-2400 8GB 1333 CL7 RAM 1TB 524AS-ending Seagate drive ASUS DVD-RW GTS450 MSI P67-based board Digital TV Tuner Card
Tada, I'm good for a couple more years.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[cod3r_]

When did you leave the "specs chase"? Had to have been many years ago. You can build a 2k PC today that far out paces video games. Maybe blame it on the attention iphone games has taken away from PC titles, but either way it's hardly a specs chase any more.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you haven't been in it for so long you probably don't know that a top of the line rig form 4 years ago is still a very capable gaming machine today. The only updates I've made to my "gaming" pc is adding more ram, and finally upgrading to windows 7 64 from XP x64 (prodded by the fact that I don't want o get caught having to upgrade to win8 shortly), oh, I guess I "upgraded" my video card since the fan on the old one crapped out and burnt up, but the $75 value card wasn't chasing specs.

Sure I can't play Modern Warfare 3 and get 252 fps with all the detail sliders maxed out, but I can play it with the the detail levels on "high" and get a respectable 35 fps.

The "spec chase" in PC gaming died off about the same time the xbox became big. Why should PC game companies keep pushing the spec envelope when their cash cow of xbox gamers can't play those games? I don't know the last time I even bothered to look at "minimum" performance requirements and given my current PC still outperforms the likely specs of the xbox 720 I can not worry about upgrading for at least another 4 years.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[suprcvic]

My PC is 5 years old and the only upgrades I've done are more memory and new video cards periodically. Build a beefy enough system up front and upgrades later are minimal.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[h4rr4r]

PC's got good enough about 5-10 years ago that this specs chase is a distant memory. If you spend $500 every 5 or so years you will be a head of the game.

Valve might prefer you do that, it is why steam has a big picture mode after all.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[firex726]

Yea, my last computer lasted some 4 years without needing an upgrade.
Granted I usually try to max it out, when I buy it initially.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[firex726]

> Why should PC game companies keep pushing the spec envelope when their cash cow of xbox games can't play those games?

exactly... The SW is simply not demanding cutting edge HW, because it's written for stuff released years ago. In terms of pushing the envelope, consoles are holding back PC gaming for anything cross platform.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[ByOhTek]

Made a 1.3k PC two years ago... Kept the old Case/Keyboard/Mouse/Monitor/HDDs from my previous box... Still performs very well... Though a vid card update is tempting.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

The PC is not the current target of any AAA title with the sole exception of MMOs and the occasional Blizzard title, and those are designed for bare-minimum specs anyway. Any modern game is designed in exclusive for obsolete 10-years old technology such as those present in the XBox 360 and PS3 consoles, and even the most braindead box built today will massively outperform them. You couldn't go back to the specs chase even if you wanted to.

The situation may change next year with the release of next-gen consoles, but since Nintendo completely dominated the previous generation using incredibly obsolete technology, both Microsoft and Sony are likely to reevaluate their investment. I don't think you're going to see anything close to state-of-the-art tech in neither the PS4 or the next XBox.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[L4t3r4lu5]

There is no chase anymore. Gaming hardware advancement has far outstripped the speed of gaming software improvement now, with PCs up to 5 years old more than able to play the latest games (I only upgraded because my old PC died and parts weren't available anymore). I have a friend gaming on a QX6800 with 4GB DDR2 and an HD4750, and he plays the same games as I do on my i5 2500K with 16GB DDR3 and GTX670, and I played the same games on my Q6600 with 4GB DDR2 and 8800GTX until about 4 months ago.

I'm sure Modern Call of World of WafareCraft Duty 3: Special Mist of Black Panda Ops of looks just wonderful with everything on ULTRA on your 3x30" Eyefinity 3D displays, but the gameplay is no different. Besides, I need glasses; If I take them off, my eyes handle anti-aliasing for me!

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[h4rr4r]

Why so much RAM and still a spinning disk?

I bet my machine with 4GB of RAM and an SSD is faster to use.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[ledow]

Personally, I never have been a "gamer" from that sort of perspective, and yet since the days of DOS I was playing top titles within a year or so of their release. Hell, I played Quake on a min-spec Pentium with a Voodoo card within days of release and that was the first ever game to actually MAKE people into "gamers" to buy an upgrade card that serves no further purpose than to play games faster (back then, it was necessary, though unless you wanted flickbook framerates).

The problem with PC gaming is not the hardware, but the mentality. "I have to have 120fps on everything, in HD, with all the options turned on and all the latest kit to show off" - there isn't a console in the world that actually does the equivalent, and if there was it would cost a fortune or slow to a crawl and gamers would hardly notice the difference otherwise.

I have a laptop now - technically nowhere close to a gamer's laptop but it has nVidia Optimus graphics. It cost not much more than just about any of the current consoles has ever cost on release day. I can't find a game on my Steam list that it doesn't play. And from the current AAA-titles? Well, in a year's time when they are sensible prices I will buy them and try them and most of them will work just fine (if 9 years of Steam gaming is anything to go by, and years more of Counterstrike play before that) but I might have to turn down an option or two.

PC gaming isn't about upgrading every two seconds. Being a "gamer" is. I can name every upgrade I've ever done to every PC I've ever personally owned, and most of the time that was a one-time, never-to-be-repeated upgrade that doubled the performance for much much less than the price of an equivalent replacement (if you upgrade a machine, it's likely that it's to hit some bottleneck which costs more than the machine is worth to upgrade further). I have never upgraded a motherboard, or a CPU, in my own machines in all the time I've owned a PC precisely because the upgrades, and their associated prerequisite upgrades, were never worth it.

And I've probably personally owned about 3 desktops and 4-5 laptops in all my time playing, so I certainly get some use out of them (and, to be honest, the laptops die by physical breakage on the hinges more than obsolescence and I still have an IBM Thinkpad with a 90MHz processor that's going strong). And I do think of myself as a gamer, in terms of the amount of time I spend playing and the amount of money I spend each year on games, but not a "gamer" in terms of spending money on constant upgrades for my computers.

I actually have, upstairs, an MSI gaming laptop that was bought as my last work laptop three years ago (my employer buys whatever I specify, and I specified nVidia graphics for various reasons and ended up with a gaming laptop that was vastly overpowered and half-the-cost of an equivalent business model). The screen hinge is shattered and it's being used as separate LCD / keyboard parts (blue-takked to the wall and the worktop appropriately). And it *still* laughs at 99% of the games on my Steam account after all that time. And that's a laptop, which can't really be upgraded at all (about the only thing I could do to it is increase the RAM but it's on a 32-bit OS and already at 4Gb, or change the HDD, but that's really not a bottleneck in anything I do on it).

Gone are the days where you have to have the latest bus that nobody else has got, with a massively overpowered card that churns through power, whirrs like mad, and sets the motherboard on fire, and some huge CPU and memory that's unheard of in anything else but video-editing, and some stupidly over-powered PSU to run it all, just to play a 3D game. Hell, a half-decent laptop laughs at anything for at least 3-4 years so long as you're not hoping for 120fps in stereo 3D at the highest resolution supported on the HDMI out, on full detail while encoding Blu-Ray's in the background.

And, to be honest, in all my time, I've never had a laptop that didn't break BEFORE it became obsolete (usu

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Spinning disk means large storage, SSDs are for OS and applications. My machine shits all over yours, so what is your point?

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Glarimore]

Yeah, the twenty bucks you would have saved getting 4 GB instead of 8 GB would've allowed for a much better storage drive.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[h4rr4r]

Games are applications. They do lots of IO to read in the massive levels. Unless you like waiting for loading. Spinning disk is for cheap storage, so either you are ripping blu-rays or poor or out of date.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad news. You're already back in the chase with HD upgrades, fan upgrades etc. Not to mention paying for patches (DLC) and all the things that Desktop PCs do. It's not a console in the sense that you don't need to patch it or be connected to the Internet like a REAL console (PS1 SNES) all you have is a glorified PC. Get serious here.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

2k(while it definitely allows for some sweet toys) is really overkill for adequate gaming. Particularly this late in the console cycle, almost any CPU that isn't total budget crap, along with an $80-$100 video card will run almost anything if you don't crank the pretty all the way up, and will generally support somewhat better looking play than the available consoles. Consoles are still a bit cheaper on hardware(though games can really make up the difference if you buy too many); but this isn't the bad old days when you needed some seriously firebreathing gear to keep up with the PC gaming market.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Blaskowicz]

So, your rebuttal is you recently bought some mid range, almost high end (for the CPU) hardware. Your point of view amounts to being right if you spend money and being wrong if you don't spend it.

Meanwhile, my PC is about 3 year old and never could run Crysis 1 well, because I could not spend a few hundreds to boost it enough. I even bought a recent midrange card (gt240 gddr5), which was incredibly more powerful than what I had before but it was still too slow. Other specs : Athlon II X2 245, 2GB ddr2, nforce 5 mobo, 1TB hard drive (since dead).

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Support for this varies by studio and even by game; but sometimes the PC side can at least enjoy the benefits of having minimum specs that are basically dictated by the console ports; but at least having the option to shove the sliders all the way toward 'overkill' or install a bunch of mods that each use more RAM than a PS3 or Xbox360 has available for its entire system...

The existence of consoles generally means that even your crap best-buy special is an $80 video card away from being able to play the game; but you also have the option of throwing a gloriously detailed gameworld across 2560x1600 if you feel like it.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not have known what you were doing or something.

That speaks volumes about how approachable the PC is, and what Valve is trying to fix. Also, which one is it, PC gamers: are you pissed at consoles for holding PC graphics back, or are you happy that your PCs last more than two years without needing upgrades?

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[thoromyr]

measured by what benchmark? My non-SSD system will bury yours in the benchmarks I care about due to its 32GB RAM (still not enough, though) and fast CPU. Hint, your SSD isn't fast enough to keep system performance up when buried in swap. While 4GB is sufficient for some users, many it is not. A windows gamer friend of mine finally had to bite the bullet and go 64-bit to be able to use 8GB RAM so it isn't just non-gamer uses that benefit from RAM.

In short, it all depends on what your use case is. If yours involves totally loaded memory of 3GB your 4GB is going to be okay. I have hit swap even with 32GB of RAM. Some operations that simply weren't possible on a limited system (32-bit OS) are now do-able. The worst case example I tracked required 13GB just for the file load -- given other overhead it required 16GB just to load and do minimal operations.

When I put an SSD in my last computer I discovered the bottleneck for my operations was *not* the disk (which really surprised me as I expected file load/saves that were taking several minutes to become much faster instead of no discernable difference) but rather the CPU. It all depends on how the file is constructed on disk -- the new system has a much better CPU (and far more RAM) which *did* improve file load/save operations.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

I use both gaming PCs and consoles, and both have their place. A reasonable gaming PC costs about as much as a commodity PC+console, and their techonolgical shelflife is about the same. It's been years since there was a new release that really warranted hardware upgrades. The advantages of a console are that it's low-maintenance, easy to use, well supported and integrated. A PC is general purpose, and the user has the freedom to do what they want with it for better or worse. Yes, you can install an emulator, but you can also install a trojan or delete a vital system file.

I think Valve will do rather well with a console because they already have a decent back catalogue from which to draw launch-day releases, a well established business model selling 3rd party games and damn good first party games. If they make HL3 "steambox" exclusive, that would net them a 20-30% market share right there (at the cost of a lot of good will). My only concern is that Valve has been one of only a few developers of first class PC shooters; if they go all console-y then we're doomed to dumbed down console ports forever :-)

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Per Abrahamsen]

My guess is that most "Linux" game ports will target the Piston spec, so no need to upgrade before a new Piston is released.

If you choose to build your own box, go as close as possible to the Piston with regard to hardware and software as you can. I don't believe the ports will be tested on a wide variety of configurations. "Works on Piston" is a much easier target than "works on Linux". What does the later even mean?

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[tepples]

Spinning disk is for cheap storage, so either you are ripping blu-rays or poor or out of date.

Or you just have more applications installed than will fit on, say, a 128 GB SSD.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[gman003]

1) 8GB isn't much RAM. My laptop is packing 12GB and a slot to spare, and I know of several gamers who rock 64GB so they can put games on a ramdisk for instant loading.

2) Games are too big to install to any reasonably-priced SSD, and are often optimized for sequential access due to consoles still running off optical disks. So installing games to a spinning rust disk makes more sense than installing them to an oversized thumb drive. Thus it follows that your options are either a somewhat-tricky, more-expensive hybrid setup (as I did) or sticking to just hard drive (as he did).

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[slim]

You must not have known what you were doing or something.

(I am not the GP)

I used to know what I was doing, with regard to PC building, from around the 486 era until when AGP started replacing PCI. Then I realised that it didn't interest me one jot, and dropped out of the race. From then on I used consoles for gaming, and off-the-shelf PCs for general computing.

If someone offers me a cheap box that behaves like a console, but is more indie-friendly than an Xbox, I'm interested.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[telchine]

Hell, I played Quake on a min-spec Pentium with a Voodoo card within days of release and that was the first ever game to actually MAKE people into "gamers" to buy an upgrade card that serves no further purpose than to play games faster (back then, it was necessary, though unless you wanted flickbook framerates).

I played Quake on a Cyrix DX4-100 (overclocked to 120Mhz) with a standard SVGA card.

Sure the resolution as lowand the frame-rates wern't spectacular, but isn't that your whole point? You don't need to buy top end hardware to play games. You can get away without upgrading every few months if you are happy with not having the best graphics.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[h4rr4r]

Ok, so buy them both.

I thought maybe the $20 would have got him $20 closer to a bigger performance boost.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I just buy a new computer every few years, recycle what parts i can and play what I can on steam.
I know the torture cycle your describing but i just don't subscribe to it.
If I average it out it is probably about $500 (Canadian) a year and I get by pretty well playing recent titles.
I have never been a console gamer, and don't like the idea of hardware that I could only play games on.
But there is something to be said for the reliability of a console, I think here your getting best of both worlds and I'd definitely consider it.
Kind of like what 'other is' did for the play station.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Dr_Barnowl]

SSD are good for random IO of lots of tiny files because of the low latency, but spinning rust is about equivalent for bulk IO. If the bulk transfer speed of the media approaches the speed of the SATA bus, there isn't any real difference.

If you're a half decent game developer, you write your levels as large files that can be read sequentially and not randomly. SSDs should only improve loading times for badly written games.

Spinning rust is cheap, and game textures are large.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Gaygirlie]

Games are applications. They do lots of IO to read in the massive levels. Unless you like waiting for loading.

Games usually load their levels in large, sequential blocks, so it's not really that bad. If you have two or three smaller spinning disks in a striped configuration then the difference between an SSD and spinning disks in gaming-related situations gets a lot smaller, but the spinning disks also win hands-down in the amount of storage available. I, for example, have two 500GB spinning disks in a striped configuration on my desktop PC and I get sustained read-speeds between 170-200 megabytes/second, and I get only 30-40 megabytes more per second from my SSD -- sure, the SSD has almost zero latency when seeking so it it the obvious choice for installing the OS and all the applications on it, but the spinning disks are perfectly valid for mostly-sequential data like games.

Also, your comment about choosing less RAM because you have an SSD is silly: an SSD only helps you when stuff needs to be loaded or saved, but RAM helps you at all times. RAM is also hundreds of times faster than an SSD, an SSD simply is not good as a replacement for RAM. Even if you were running a 32-bit game (32-bit applications are limited to 3 gigabytes address space) you'd still benefit from extra RAM in the sense that all the RAM that wasn't used by the game could be used to cache its files or keep your other applications running -- I, atleast, always keep a few PuTTY-sessions and Firefox running at all times, and I still find myself running low on RAM quite often, even with 8GB of it.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Gaygirlie]

I have to agree with the other commenters: you've just been silly and short-sighted, and didn't really know what the heck you were doing in the first place. A 5-6 years old PC can perfectly well play games at similar settings as a PS3 or Xbox360, so if you feel their image quality is fine why would you need to chase after newer and newer specs? Or is it just the "since it's POSSIBLE I feel it's my responsibility to continue upgrading!" - mentality?

I myself have a Phenom II x4, 8GB RAM and a GeForce GTX 460 -- all already out-dated parts -- and I can still play all the games I throw at it at 1080p and high/max details. This setup will be able to play games just fine for several more years to come.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[ThurstonMoore]

You didnt play Quake on a Voodoo within days of release. GlQuake wasn't releases until 6 months after the regular release.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[slim]

I have to agree with the other commenters: you've just been silly and short-sighted, and didn't really know what the heck you were doing in the first place. A 5-6 years old PC can perfectly well play games at similar settings as a PS3 or Xbox360, so if you feel their image quality is fine why would you need to chase after newer and newer specs? Or is it just the "since it's POSSIBLE I feel it's my responsibility to continue upgrading!" - mentality?

Which makes me wonder, why make the Steambox upgradeable?

Nail the spec down, factor the design onto a single board with as few chips as possible, and churn them out cheap in their millions. Don't even think of upping the spec for 5 years or so.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention you can sell your old gfx cards, if you upgrade.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[MistrBlank]

Spinning disk is for cheap storage, so either you are ripping blu-rays or poor or out of date.

Or you just have more applications installed than will fit on, say, a 128 GB SSD.

Which is why I have multiple 128GB SSDs to cover all of my apps and games (and actually a separate OS disk)......

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

My XBox 360 is almost that old and the only upgrades I've done is new batteries for the controller periodically. And it cost me 300, not the 3000 that a high end "beefy" PC would have.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

^^ 'other os' dis for playstation

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

True, I had a simular setup was happy, but I bought a 3dfx voodoo 1 because GL-Quake blew my mind. It wasn't faster, but the graphics where worlds better.

3D acceleration changed everything.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Isaac Remuant]

This is the best strategy, really. When you buy computers, make the sacrifice and it will pay in time. I'm using a computer from 2008 and it still feels almost new.

And I'm unfortunately living in a third world country where all this shit is expensive and hard to get (now more than ever).

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[PhrostyMcByte]

You must not have known what you were doing or something. My PC is 2 years old and it's still fast enough to run any modern game at medium to maxed specs at 1920x1080 while running Netflix in HD on monitor 2. It cost about $790.

This is only possible because games are designed for console specs. If consoles had the graphics cards of today, Windows PCs would simply not be able to keep up due to severe driver safety overhead.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[cod3r_]

Yeah I was thinking overkill as in more than half of the 2k would be 2 sli'd latest model Nvidia gfx cards :) but assumed you had the monitor.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Builder]

Two years in the gaming world is nothing. I remember about 12 years back when you really did have to upgrade every year to 2 years to keep playing games with decent performance.

Things in the hardware space weren't always as stagnant as they are now.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Cinder6]

Out of curiosity, what are you using all that RAM for? I have 8GB in my gaming rig, and the reason it's so "low" is that I've never seen it use over 6GB at any given time. Unfortunately, Windows sees that 75% use as "really low", despite having 2GB free, so it often minimizes my game in order to urge me to turn it off. Because I can't find a way to disable that warning, I'll upgrade to 24GB as soon as I can find quality memory for $50 (really should have taken advantage of that Black Friday sale...).

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Cinder6]

I have a 64GB SSD and a 1TB platter drive. The platter drive is there simply for gaming. With games taking tens of gigabytes these days (the new Max Payne is 30GB!), you have to get a large and expensive SSD in order to store more than a couple at the same time. Sure, you could delete and re-download, but we're talking huge downloads and added wear on the SSD.

Furthermore, as others have pointed out, an SSD isn't nearly as beneficial for sequential reads, which is what most gaming IO consists of. My load times in Skyrim are less than 5 seconds for the longest ones, and only about 2 seconds for short ones (quick loads in the same area are nearly instantaneous).

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Well MY daddy's PC is even better then yours.

Ya huh it is!

No mine!

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[h4rr4r]

Which is why you can move them around, or maybe just maybe buy a bigger ssd.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[h4rr4r]

What are you using that ram for?
If you want a server get one.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, my last computer is a SGI Tezro, and it is still cool. That thing could be almost a decade old, and I'm using it every day.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[parlancex]

Yeah! Console gaming is way better, instead of wondering whether a game will actually run at 1080p at 60fps you're already guaranteed it won't! You don't even have to think about it!

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[CastrTroy]

I bought a $500 PC 8 years ago and it still does fine I will upgrade it when it dies. Then I buy a new console once the latest tech comes out to $200. So over 8 years I've spent $900 (one pc and 2 consoles). $2000 is a lot to spend all at once, even if it lasts you for 10 years. At that price i could buy the newest console as soon as it comes out (usually around $400, sometimes less, sometimes more) 5 times over.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Terrasque]

I use Intel's SRT and you know, it actually works pretty darn well.

VM's feel snappy, games load really fast, even steam itself doesn't act like it's running on a 386.

It's not always perfect, for example after downloading and installing a few new games on Steam (amounting to ~30gb being shuffled into it) GW2 was noticeably slower to launch.. For about the first two times. After that, smooth sailing. And after seeing it load on a friend's system with only spinning disk, it was still loads better even with the cache halfway decimated.

Got 20gb of my SSD configured for caching a 1tb slowpoke disk, and the rest of the 120gb set off to windows. Worked perfectly so far.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[CastrTroy]

In university we played a lot of Quake II, even though Quake III was available, because it ran on almost anybody's computer. Lots of fun death matches there. One guy ran it on his laptop with a passive TFT. Terrible ghosting. I remember the day he got a full size PC. He kicked all our butts that day. Apparently when you're used to paying without being able to see anything, suddenly being able to see makes you a super player.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[schlachter]

and that's the problem...
$200 for an xbox that will last 5+ yrs
or
$800+ on a PC that will last ??

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

TLDR: Opinions about hardware purchases. Mixed bag, some true and well reasoned, some full of it.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[DdJ]

You must not have known what you were doing or something.

You seem to be saying this as if it were bad or something.

I insist on playing games on a system I can use without knowing what I'm doing. I'll consider any such option, and won't seriously consider any other options.

This is why almost all of my gaming is on consoles (or console-like portables) these days (and the rest is all pretty old titles that'll run on just about anything, under emulation).

(I program and run servers for my day job. I'm not screwing with that sort of thing for my entertainment, not if I have any choice.)

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not have known what you were doing or something.

(I am not the GP)

I used to know what I was doing, with regard to PC building, from around the 486 era until when AGP started replacing PCI. Then I realised that it didn't interest me one jot, and dropped out of the race. From then on I used consoles for gaming, and off-the-shelf PCs for general computing.

If someone offers me a cheap box that behaves like a console, but is more indie-friendly than an Xbox, I'm interested.

ouya?

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Mike Buddha]

My XBox 360 is almost that old and the only upgrades I've done is new batteries for the controller periodically. And it cost me 300, not the 3000 that a high end "beefy" PC would have.

And it plays ALL of the latest games...

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[shutdown -p now]

If you play games on PC with graphics quality that matches that of Xbox, it'll last you 5 years as well.

If you want to play at 1920x1200 with 4x AA, perfect shadows and water reflections, and insane viewing distances, then, yeah, it's less than that. There's no free lunch.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[UnknownSoldier]

> The PC is not the current target of any AAA title with the sole exception of MMOs and the occasional Blizzard title

You don't know WTF you are talking about.

dice.se/wp-content/uploads/GDC11_DX11inBF3_Public.pdf

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[barc0001]

My Xbox 360 is almost that old, and all I've had to do is REPLACE THE FUCKING THING TWICE at my own expense because of RRoDs after the warranty ran out. So, yay?

Also, $3000 for a high end PC? If you think a high end PC costs 3K, you're sadly misinformed. My 3 year old PC runs Borderlands 2 just fine and it cost me $800 to build back then.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[SighKoPath]

Except at launch, the xbox with the 20GB HDD was $399.99, or $299.99 without a HDD. Want to upgrade your launch xbox to a more reasonably sized hard drive? I hope you're ready to pay extra. Oh shit, did your xbox get a red ring of death while out of warranty? Guess you'll have to buy another! Also, have fun with the $50/year for xbox live if you want to play multiplayer!

So, 5 years of xbox 360:
1. Launch console, $400
2. New HDD, $100
3. Replacement console after RROD, $300
4. 5+ years of xbox live, $250+

Total: $1050+

Suddenly, that $800+ on a PC doesn't look so bad.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Ninendo tried that back in the n64 days no one ever bought the addons components. Donkey kong 64 eventually had to shell out the ram expansion slot to consumers on their own.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[SighKoPath]

Sounds like someone's never heard of Steam Mover. Moves games between directories (even across drives) using junction points. Set your steam install directory to the large slow spinning HDD, and use Steam Mover to swap a couple games you play often to the SSD.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[sexconker]

SSD are good for random IO of lots of tiny files because of the low latency, but spinning rust is about equivalent for bulk IO.

Show me a spinning disk that can shit out 500 MB/sec.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the same chase. You won't be researching what pieces are compatible, is this DRAM the right Mhz? Will this CPU fit into my old socket on my motherboard? Etc. etc.

Instead it will be more like, buy CPU Level 1, Level 2 or Level 3. GPU Level 1, 2 or 3. Slide the new one in, and reset, you're online.

It'll be a 'console upgrade' experience, not a PC upgrade experience.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[exomondo]

At least with consoles you don't have to worry about updating drivers and get into the settings of each game and tweak things to get it running well, not to mention having to deal with Windows. I can see how that appeals to people who like fiddling with that stuff though.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[exomondo]

Why so much RAM and still a spinning disk?

Because games take up a lot of space, for example Max Payne3 is something in the order of 30GB, even with a 256GB SSD you're going to fill it up pretty quickly.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

1998 called, they'd like your experiences with PC gaming back. Who the fuck has to update drivers or tweak shit to get a modern PC game running. You're doing it wrong.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Specter]

$650 PC (all new including 24" monitor; hooray for Black Friday), 5 years ago, upgraded RAM once and replaced the video card twice (once due to h/w failure, once for performance). Still running modern PC games, almost always on high or highest settings. Still going strong.

That said, I'm really interested in the Steambox. Next free weekend I get I think I may hack together an Ubuntu box and give the beta a try.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[geekoid]

psst..
that chase is largely over.

I am running a 4 year old system and it plays crysis fine.
I built a new system because there are 4 of us and we only had 4 computers.

The only people chasing are the people that need the illusion of on e more FPS.

And I have been gaming on PCs for that entire existence of the PC. I am well aware of the chase. Especially after Doom came out where you would need to upgrade the processor for the next game.
Like I said, long gone. and good riddance.

Becasue Valve is an excellent game delivery platform.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[geekoid]

The money argument? OK.

a 800 dollar PC should last you 5 years. I have one that's 4 years old and I don't foresee upgrading it.
Using steam I get most may games for under 20 bucks. I got the entire Civilization collect for 9.99.
The exception to that was portal 2. I was more then happy to shell out first release price.
Not something you can do on the console. SO I am saving money there.

And to use all the features of a game on XBox you need to pay a yearly fee.
On the PC they are free.

I have an XBox, and a PS3 and a wii.
I find specific types of games to be superior on the console.

What XBox lasts 5 years~

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[geekoid]

I haven't done that at all since windows 7 came out.
I know I will need to dodge pitch forks, but MS did a pretty good job with win 7.

I don't fiddle much any more, and I have no patience to fiddle with games. There is no longer an excuse for it.
The most twiddling I do with games is set to the correct resolution and adjust sound volumes.

I did learn something very annoying with windows 7:
There is no way through windows to change the start up sound. You can change the volume or turn it off; which is lame.
Reeks of a marketing decision.
However I did crack open a hex editors and change the dll to play my sound.
It's MUTH/R boot from Aliens. I just showed it to my son for the first time, so I change the start up so he would get a kick out of it; which he did.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[geekoid]

Good luck editing a 8G video file.

You are conflating two different things, stop it.
SSD means you boot faster, and access faster, maybe. there are a lot of factors their Bus, application capabilities and so on.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[geekoid]

Yes, I'll just run right out and buy a 2 terabyte SSD.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[geekoid]

Show me a home application the needs it.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[geekoid]

No game need more then 8, and any problem you are having with 8 is likely to occur with 24.
IT's aa setting issue.

If you are doing many big tasks, then that's different.
If you are ripping disk while playing game, more ram will help.
Of course there are plenty of non game application that can use a shit ton of RAM. Video editing, CAD, weather simulation, ASIC simulation or trimming, and so on.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[geekoid]

Which doesn't fix the wear issue of the SSD.
Which is a lot better then it was, but still not as longer as platters.

Anyway, game have minimal benefit from SSD.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Consoles meant never having to look on the box and see if I needed yet another upgrade to play a game.

Funny every time i get the time to use my xbox that's all it fucking does.

20 Mins downloading and installing said update, then requires reboot and oh look another fucking 1 hour updated is required, then get to the point where it lets me sign in then tells me i need another fucking update... (2 hours later i can finally launch the game and find out whether the game itself needs an update) ..I Give up go back to PC and actually play the games instead of installing mandatory software update downloads. (at least hardware is installed immediately and not changed but every few years.)

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[exomondo]

Who the fuck has to update drivers

Yeah nobody has to update drivers to get things to work, like the issues with modern games like Diablo 3.

or tweak shit to get a modern PC game running.

running well , just look at all the posts on the ubisoft forums about Assassin's Creed 3 running terribly or crashing due to graphics driver issues.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[exomondo]

I haven't done that at all since windows 7 came out.

You haven't updated your drivers since windows 7 came out?

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

when my mates come over and we play games the best experience is multiple controllers on the xbox or ps3 in the theater room, not everyone lugging their own pc over.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[sexconker]

Show me a home application the needs it.

Every desktop PC ever.
Regardless, the claim was about the technical aspects of an SSD vs an HDD, whether or not anyone needs that speed (they do) is moot.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

I know of several gamers who rock 64GB

man they must be pretty hardcore to rock 64GB!

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

you also dont have to worry about instability, operating system problems, viruses and malware...because you know Windows is so insecure and bug-ridden and terrible.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[StillAnonymous]

You don't NEED it, you just want it. It's a "nice to have", not a necessity.

If I could only have 1 drive in a system, I'd pick capacity over speed as well. Of the top of my head, I can only think of 4 games that really annoyed me for loading times, 3 of them being the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, and the other being Torchlight.

If you think about it from Valve's point of view, they'd rather you not have to download the same game over and over again.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[slashmydots]

I did quite the opposite. It shipped it with a single core 939 socket AMD chip and 1GB of RAM and a 6600GT since my most immediate need was graphics. Then I bought the Toledo X2 CPU when the price went from about $700 to $220. Then I got some 2x1 GB CL2.5 400MHz DDR1 and the same in 2x512's later to max it out at 3GB for more advanced games. I also went to an 8600GTS then a GTS450 (which I brought with me to the new PC). I specifically bought a 4-DIMM board and a dual core capable one because of this and saved at least $1000.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

That is just silly. You upgrade your console every time a newer version comes out, how is that any different than looking at requirements for a PC game? If you have a PS2 or an Xbox, obviously PS3 games won't work with it. How is that really any different than if you have a Pentium 4 and Geforce 2 and seeing that a game needs a Core i7 and Geforce GTX 460? The only difference is that the newer PC will almost always be certain to still run all of your old games while your console will almost always not be able to run your old games.

Maybe PC makers and game developers should come up with something akin to AMD's failed PR rating system and slap big performance rating numbers on systems and games. "Oh, this game is rated 4 but my PC is only rated 3" sort of thing. It's no different than seeing that PS2 vs PS3 vs Xbox vs Xbox 360 vs Wii vs Wii U label.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[cheesybagel]

How about just making Steam automatically check your hardware specs and give you a report of how viable your system is for running the game in the first place?

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[cheesybagel]

I usually also upgrade every 4 years i.e. two iterations of Moore's law.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Black LED]

1) An $800 PC can run games and offer features that a $200 Xbox cannot come close to handling.
2) An $800 PC can do a whole hell of a lot more than play games. You can MAKE games on it or any of a million other things.

Since most people will already have a PC anyways, why cheap out on the PC AND buy an Xbox for gaming? If you just bought the more expensive PC in the first place, you'd end up spending about the same amount but you'd have consolidated the equipment and have a system that is many times more powerful and flexible than that cheap PC and Xbox.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 64GB of RAM in my PC and I bet that still cost a little less than any decent sized SSD (motherboard was $200 and 8x8GB RAM was $300). I run a lot of stuff from RAMDisk, sometimes entire games.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Emetophobe]

Why do people constantly feel the need to update drivers? I find a set of stable drivers and I stick with them for years. I'm still using the 295.10 nvidia drivers because they're the only ones that I've found that were 100% stable. All the other drivers I'm using were detected by windows 7 when I installed it (sound card, keyboard, etc), and I've never needed to update those.

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[h4rr4r]

Why would you need that?
Get a big enough SSD for OS and games and stick your movie rips on spinning rust.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[h4rr4r]

How many games exceed 256GB?

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[bat21]

Like Starcraft 2?

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[exomondo]

Why do people constantly feel the need to update drivers?

Because of bugs the manifest in new games, even the 295.10 drivers aren't particularly old.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus: "Oh snap..Wait...nVidia..?"
*Showing the middle finger fertility gesture*

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you fucking stupid the xbox 360 has not had the RROD since 4 years ago and the warrenty was extened for 3 years meaning even a full year after the xbox 360 were having the problem you could still replace it free of charge. And an xbox 360 does not cost $400 unless you are buying a limited edition halo 4 console edition and the HDD comes with the xbox free so you exadurated over $600 so YES AN XBOX IS A BETTER VALUE THEN A PC.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Kartu]

Which SSD shits out 500 MB/sec pretty please?

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[sexconker]

Lots of them?

Samsung 840 120 GB
Sequential Read 530 MB/s
Sequential Write 130 MB/s
$100
http://amzn.com/B009NHAF06

Samsung 840 250 GB
Sequential Read 540 MB/s
Sequential Write 250 MB/s
$180
http://amzn.com/B009NHAEXE

Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB
Sequential Read 530 MB/s
Sequential Write 390 MB/s
$137
http://amzn.com/B009NB8WR0

Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB
Sequential Read 540 MB/s
Sequential Write 520 MB/s
$250
http://amzn.com/B009NB8WRU

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[sexconker]

You don't NEED it, you just want it. It's a "nice to have", not a necessity.

If I could only have 1 drive in a system, I'd pick capacity over speed as well. Of the top of my head, I can only think of 4 games that really annoyed me for loading times, 3 of them being the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, and the other being Torchlight.

If you think about it from Valve's point of view, they'd rather you not have to download the same game over and over again.

Have fun waiting for your I/O bottleneck to shit out the bits you need, I guess.
If I need more space I just add more drives.
I currently have 2 256 GB SSDs in RAID 0 (with a nightly full-disk backup to an external drive so don't even try try to tell me I'm asking for trouble).

I can go to 2 512 drives, or 4 256 GB drives, or whateverthefuckIwant. I am constrained only by the amount of ports in my system (plenty) and number of drives I can shove in the case and hook up to power (also plenty). I am an adult and as such I have adult levels of money, so paying $1 per GB for ludicrous speeds is a no brainer.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Except at launch, the xbox with the 20GB HDD was $399.99, or $299.99 without a HDD. Want to upgrade your launch xbox to a more reasonably sized hard drive? I hope you're ready to pay extra. Oh shit, did your xbox get a red ring of death while out of warranty? Guess you'll have to buy another! Also, have fun with the $50/year for xbox live if you want to play multiplayer!

So, 5 years of xbox 360:

1. Launch console, $400

2. New HDD, $100

3. Replacement console after RROD, $300

4. 5+ years of xbox live, $250+

Total: $1050+

Suddenly, that $800+ on a PC doesn't look so bad.

Yeah, thing about numbers is that if you only use the ones that support your viewpoint, you're ignoring a lot.

Launch console cost: If you bought at launch, which is less and less the case these days. If you're going to compare Launch prices, why would you assume that an $800 PC with year+ old hardware is a solid comparison? I think of $400 for a 'Launch' NVidia card and that $800 is bullshit real fast.

Upgrade HDD - why would you do this at launch instead of buying the higher-end model? Why would you upgrade the HDD if you didn't need to? The 20gb HDD was plenty for most consumers. It was plenty for ME, and I'm a considerable PC and Console gamer. The 'need' for it is a blatant lie.

Replacement console - *if* you needed it. I've owned several xboxes and never had a RROD. And you ignore when MS extended the warranty upwards of a year on the consoles to cover that issue when it was prevalent. That being said, I've had WAY more HDD failures in PC's than any Xbox that ever existed. PC's also have more overhead (your specs are great and all, but guess what? The OS still needs resources too.) and are way more prone to driver issues, ID10T failures, etc. Your PC hardware can fail too, and saying PC instead of Xbox to the manufacturer doesn't change that.

Xbox live - if you pay the $60/year (it's 60 not 50 btw) then yes... but considering how many times you can get discounted Live cards ($30-$40/year is pretty common) plus free times for loyalty and other rewards, it drops the price significantly.

Add in the ease of use of an Xbox / Console game versus install and config of PC games, and it's easy to see why the casual gamer market will always choose a console. Let's see - replace my Xbox for $300 (if I buy new, with no sales or discounts) or upgrade a part of my PC for the same and still have to install it, configure it, load drivers, and config my game? Yeah...

Add into that being able to buy used games on the cheap that work great and the fact that the Xbox is a killer media center, and your argument flushes right down the toilet.

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[HappyPsycho]

Or even 120GB?

Most games now days are around the 20GB mark (WoW, COD: BO2, Diablo III). So even if you only have a 60 there is space for windows and at least 1 game (Don't know why you would buy a 60 nowdays).

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[HappyPsycho]

You got 2TB worth of games you actually play?

I normally play anywhere from 2-5 games at a time, and I still have a 1Tb in my PC alongside the SSD plus most of my actual storage is on the 4Tb NAS (most big media is dvd rips or music which get streamed when needed).

SSD is still expensive by comparison but I'd also argue that the average person would barely use a 1TB fully (I've seen it but kill the duplicates / most important files are stored in the "cloud" anyway). I've seen allot of users live comfortably on a laptop with a normal 500GB hard drive (most of which is still empty) which leads me to believe they could comfortably live on a 256GB SSD (and would love it due to less heat and longer battery life).

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[HappyPsycho]

If I do a fread() / fwrite() I don't care how long the call takes just that it does (I also have no control over how busy the hard drive is, or what else the OS is doing that might make it take longer).

If the call takes less time because the drive is able to fetch the data faster simply means my program runs faster.

So I'd say every program will be able to make use of it, just most users are used to the program taking X time so most deem the speed unnecssesary (then again I hear the same thing about 10+Mb internet links).

Re:Nope, ain't happening

[HappyPsycho]

I'm not fully seeing how a game that in the presence of DX11 will make use of those features but obviously fail back when they are not available is applicable to this argument.

The baseline target still has to be the consoles, even if it was PCs not all PCs can run DX11 (It is exclusive to Vista and later, so all the people still using XP can't use any of the stuff in the PDF). So although they can obviously push the envelope on PCs wayyyy farther if the user has a beefed up PC the baseline target can't be such a beast.

Author quote

[girlintraining]

...when SGI used to be cool.

"Captain, I'm sensing a bitter old man. I suggest caution."

Re:Author quote

[serviscope_minor]

Captain, I'm sensing a bitter old man. I suggest caution.

It's not bitter old man, but it is a little sad. SGI used to be the epitome of cool in the computer world. Cast your mind back to 1994. You had most people running DOS and Windows 3.11. A few people were running UNIX (tm) workstations with CDE.

Many of those systems were slow, clunky, had at most 8 bits per pixel of palletted horibleness, weak graphics ugly user interfaces and so on.

Then you had SGI.

1280x1024 trucolour displays with accelerated texture mapped graphics. Holy crap that 3D asteroid blaster game looked sweet. Oh and a really cool UI with scalable vector icons, webcams, TV out, video chat and excellent sound built in. In 1994.

Oh and you could get portable systems with a TFT screen back when they more or less did not exist for all practical purposes. And certainly not at that kind of resolution.

Seriously, SGIs were something out of the future.

How long did it take for PCs to get webcams built in?

Re:Author quote

[theurge14]

An Indigo station ran about, what, $12 grand in 1994? I think the cheapest Indy was about $5000, but I may be way off here.

Re:Author quote

[Anonymous Coward]

1280x1024 trucolour displays with accelerated texture mapped graphics.

texture mapping was always slow on classic SGIs (indigos, indys, even some indigo2/octanes), they lacked any texture memory. i ran an SGI lab from about '88 to 95, fond memories.

Re:Author quote

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Isn't SGI one of those companies that has achieved eternal coolness by (like any self-respecting rock star) dying horribly before it could really ruin its reputation with a string of pathetic comeback attempts at 3rd string clubs?

My sense is that SGI's last gasp of genuine relevance was over a decade ago; but that they are forever enshrined in the datacenters of Valhalla(and every system today that uses OpenGL gives them praise)

Re:Author quote

[Tarlus]

I have one of those sitting around with a gigantic 21" CRT... I wonder if it's worth anything as a collector's item...

Re:Author quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not but that CRT can stand in for a space heater.

Re:Author quote

[Anonymous Coward]

The weird thing is that even an Indy with 8 bit graphics looks almost like true color (with most applications). The palette management was leaps and bounds ahead of XFree86 with Colormap flashing galore and Windows 3.1 which was just barely better with 8bit color than with just 4 bit.

Re:Author quote

[Tarlus]

It's frighteningly heavy, too...

Re:Author quote

[Specter]

I can remember back in '93 going on one of my co-op assignments in college and discovering the company I worked for had not one but TWO brand spanking new SGI boxes sitting in cubicles and COMPLETELY UNUSED! I have no idea why they bought them or what they intended to do with them but you can bet _I_ found a use for them!

Re:Author quote

[Techman83]

I had a 21" Sun CRT . During a clean a shed clean out that my friend was helping me with and I said "Be careful, that things fricken heavy, I'll move it if you want", he insisted he'd be right. He went to pick it up like a normal CRT, safe to say he put it down and then picked up with a lot more knee bending and exclaiming "F*** me that thing is heavy!".

I used it as a TV on one of my early Mythbox setups for a while, but it bent the desk it was sitting on, so I ended up buying an LCD.

Well

[stoolpigeon]

if this means more games for linux on the desktop then yeah it could be big.

Otherwise - it's just another locked down console and I'm not sure what benefit it will have for linux on the desktop.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. I'm pretty sure that it means more games to the Linux desktop too.

Re:Well

[stoolpigeon]

It seems that way - but I've gotten too jaded to just count on it.

Re:Well

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

if this means more games for linux on the desktop then yeah it could be big.

Otherwise - it's just another locked down console and I'm not sure what benefit it will have for linux on the desktop.

Unless Valve has been lying through their teeth this whole time(certainly possible; but not obvious why doing so would be an advantage for them), their desire is to compete in the console space by offering one or more 'easy, just-works, fits in your living room, appliance' style PCs that will be churned out to spec by cooperating OEMs and running Steam-on-linux by default; but that they have no problem with people running Steam-on-linux on whatever oddball homebuilds they like, subject to the caveat that Valve has minimal interest in dealing with the rough edges of motherboard Z's shitty ACPI implementation or binary compatibility problems introduced by your Gentoo install's creative compiler flags.

Steam is, among other things, a DRM system; but not one that has ever depended on some crypto-lockdown-trusted-firmware(and, indeed, they seem quite worried that Microsoft, despite Games for Windows Live sucking pretty brutally, is well placed to be the ones offering such a system instead, same with Apple and its app store on the OSX side) in its Windows or Mac iterations. It would be odd if they were to go that route for Linux.

Obviously, they aren't porting stuff to linux just because they love penguins and freedom and whatnot(since the closed source Steam binary will still mostly dish out closed source game binaries); but the threat posed by both Microsoft and Apple having digital stores attached to their platforms, along with a desire not to add the cost of a Windows license to every 'console' they ship, gives them a pretty good reason to support compatibility of games with at least the most common Linux desktop systems.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam is, among other things, a DRM system; but not one that has ever depended on some crypto-lockdown-trusted-firmware(and, indeed, they seem quite worried that Microsoft, despite Games for Windows Live sucking pretty brutally, is well placed to be the ones offering such a system instead, same with Apple and its app store on the OSX side) in its Windows or Mac iterations. It would be odd if they were to go that route for Linux.

Steam is the RCMP of DRM: super accomodating and considerate but still packing heat.

Re:Well

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Oh, it's DRM alright, it's just my suspicion that (based on its history) Valve won't be demanding a signed-from-the-bootloader-on-up tivoized linux setup for their Linux version, any more than they did for their Windows or OSX versions(unlike, say, Netflix, where the fact that Roku boxes are linux-based means fuck all for 'Netflix on the Linux desktop'). From a 'free software' perspective, Steam is exactly the same as the others, it's just that from a tivoization perspective, Valve's statements and actions to date suggest that, while they do want to prod the industry into providing a standardized, living-room-friendly platform, they aren't looking for something that fundamentally isn't a PC anymore(as opposed to, say, the original Xbox, where Microsoft wanted a PC in a standardized and living-room-friendly shape; but also wanted to break PC compatibility as hard as economically feasible).

Re:Well

[geekoid]

not, it will not be big. Why do you think more games on Linux would be big? how many people aren't gaming because of that?

If you think gaming it the stop gap for Linux expansion, you are i for a rude awakening.

Re:Well

[Sigg3.net]

This caters to parents who are thinking "I want to buy a Steam"!" because they have heard about it.

  As far as I can tell, this will be _in addition to_ their computer offering. Anything else would be tossing out the baby with the bathwater.

If it is subsidized, it may have a great future in hacking projects too!

Re:Well

[stoolpigeon]

I think having games run well on Linux means improvements to the system as a whole that makes it more appealing. That's the biggest bonus to me and by big I don't necessarily mean Linux becoming a dominant desktop platform but rather it finally starts getting treated a little better by more vendors. I've been using Linux for a long time and I get pretty excited about small steps forward that are a big deal to me.

Re:Well

[Kartu]

If you read Valve CEO's explanation of why Win 8 sucks, it comes down to: "oh, it comes with application store... oh they are gonna dump prices".
Now, Microsoft having much smaller margins on its app store than what Valve is used to, is hardly a problem for us, the customers.

So what they are trying to do is basically shifting gaming world off Win platform, not to repeat Netscape's fate.
I think this is a win-win for customers:

1) The most problematic part of this move is lack of DirectX on Linux. Valve will have to solve this problem and if they succeed, it affect entire Linux world.
2) We'll finally have somewhat standardized game controllers on PC!

You can see where their naming convention is going

[Defenestrar]

It's a trap!

Linux + DRM

[SirGarlon]

Linux + DRM : Missing the point of Linux, entirely.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent: Missing the point of Steam entirely.

Steam itself is not DRM. My library contains lots of DRM free games. On the other hand it also contains certain games which come with the same DRM as the boxed version. If you want to make a point buy the DRM free indie games on Steam and and don't buy the DRM ridden ones.

Don't dismiss something just because it can do more than what you need. Nobody forces you to pirate with bittorrent or murder your wife with a kitchen knife either.

Re:Linux + DRM

[L4t3r4lu5]

Linux is an operating system, not a belief system. It lets me use my computer how I want to, and the day it gets in the way of that I will swap to something else. If I want to install DRM laden software onto Linux, who are you to judge?

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think linux's only purpose is to create DRM free games, or anything else for that matter, you're kinda missing the point. The purpose of linux afaik is to create freedom....to do whatever you want with the OS. If I want to play DRM games on my linux install, then its doing its job because its what I want to do with the OS.

Re:Linux + DRM

[firex726]

You realize Steam is itself a DRM platform?

Granted it's DRM done right, and is for the most part not a headache like other schemes, but ultimately it restricts your use of the games.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

When Linus made Linux he did not say "it is going to be DRM free", he even said that DRM is ok with Linux not too long ago.
How is "Linux + DRM" a point? What is the point of Linux then?

You are able to run DRM software on Linux right now anyway. Even if Steam is going to be big, it doesn't require DRM for the games which are distributed on it.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I fall to see how what you say matters. This could single handedly become the vehicle Linux can use to gain a foothold in the gaming industry. Combine that with the fact it also could put Linux in the hands of more users than ever. I'm thinking you're missing the big picture entirely. This is a big move for Linux. The fact valve is behind it even gives it done credibility.

Re:Linux + DRM

[yincrash]

Steam is a delivery platform with optional DRM. No game is required to use the DRM, and many indie games and older games do not. Once you purchase those games, you can move them wherever you wish and even delete Steam and still have usable games.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

> DRM done right

No such thing.

Although I suppose you could say it's "DRM done less wrong."

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam by its very nature is a form of DRM. It is admittedly one of the better implementations though.

Re:Linux + DRM

[SirGarlon]

Don't dismiss something just because it can do more than what you need.

When "more than I need" includes randomly blocking access to things I paid for, I damn well will dismiss it!

I am one of the unfortunate people who learned to hate DRM through experience. Are you aware that Steam locks you out if you play in "offline mode" for too long?

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, how? I can just start the game from the games own folder if I want to. No need to have steam even running. I guess that's DRM done right then... actually, it is!

Re:Linux + DRM

[SirGarlon]

Linux is an operating system, not a belief system.

That's strictly true, but Linux only lets you use your computer the way you want to because of the belief system that underlies it.

Re:Linux + DRM

[h4rr4r]

I think he means if you don't use that feature you will be safe.

You do not need offline mode if you only buy indie DRM free games on steam.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Safe? GP's use of 'lock out' is misleading. After a few months, offline mode fails to start, and requires signing in to be able to access offline mode again. IIRC, this is a bug. You are not getting your Steam account banned by playing in offline mode.

Re:Linux + DRM

[SirGarlon]

If I only buy indie DRM free games, I don't need Steam. I'd rather cut out the middleman and give the indie developer a bigger chunk of the sale price.

Re:Linux + DRM

[h4rr4r]

So do not use offline mode.

To play the DRM free indie games you don't need to launch steam at all. You can launch them right from their exes.

Re:Linux + DRM

[SirGarlon]

After a few months, offline mode fails to start, and requires signing in to be able to access offline mode again.

And the sign-in fails, and you have to contact tech support, and wait days for a response. Twice now. "Lockout" is the word I use to describe that.

Re:Linux + DRM

[h4rr4r]

Good point, it would be nice to have something like steam though.

My preference would be to get the games into a repository and just pay for a CD key or something. The typical brain dead each application has its own updater is one of the most annoying things about windows/osx.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandatory Correction: Linux is a kernel. Android, GNU, and similar are sytem apps that help it become an Operating System.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Immerman]

That's a worthy intent, but requires the indie developer to run some sort of store, do all the marketing, etc. which they quite likely have little interest in doing. A decent publisher actually earns their piece of the pie. Things like Steam or the various App stores allow developers to focus on developing, and let someone else do all the annoying sales work. Okay, they probably need to do at least a little marketing too just to reach critical mass for the automated recommendation system to come into play, but then they're good.

Not that I don't admire the self-publishers, but do you really want to deprive Indie developers of your dollars completely because of their choice of publisher? Now the DRM thing is completely separate, I can understand refusing to support that, but as others have pointed out DRM isn't mandatory on Steam (though I haven't noticed if they tell you up front whether it's included or not)

Re:Linux + DRM

[L4t3r4lu5]

Incorrect. Steam is a DRM and distribution scheme, in that it binds your purchase to your account, and you need to be authenticated to access that account. Your non-DRM games are inaccessible unless you are logged in to Steam, either Online or Offline. I know, from personal experience, that Offline Mode isn't for when your connection fails, as it requires you to cache your credentials prior to going Offline to work. You're SOOL if your router craps out and you can't tether your smartphone to enable Offline Mode. It's for when you're taking your library away from your network connection in a planned fashion, e.g. your laptop on holiday.

Saying this, I am going to go home now and close Steam, then try and browse to Braid in the file structure of my Steam installation. If I can run it without logging in to Steam, I will take all I've said about it back. I don't think that will be the case, though.

Re:Linux + DRM

[dkf]

Linux is an operating system, not a belief system.

Heretic! Heathen! Infidel!

If you repent and say three Hail Stallmans we'll let you off this time...

Re:Linux + DRM

[h4rr4r]

Unless Valve somehow gets Linus to infect the kernel with their DRM and close up the source, that is not going to change. I put the odds of the esteemed Mr.Torvalds doing that at about 1 in infinity.

Re:Linux + DRM

[VGPowerlord]

Saying this, I am going to go home now and close Steam, then try and browse to Braid in the file structure of my Steam installation. If I can run it without logging in to Steam, I will take all I've said about it back. I don't think that will be the case, though.

Quite a few games check by location whether they're supposed to run Steam or not, so try copying it to a different directory if it does try to start Steam.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I did not know that. Nice. Back when I was playing HL2E2 I hated how I had to keep steam running.

Re:Linux + DRM

[tepples]

If I only buy indie DRM free games, I don't need Steam. I'd rather cut out the middleman

The middleman controls access to the living room. Without a console like the forthcoming Piston, and without building a PC to put next to your TV which almost nobody seems to want to do, how are you going to play these "indie DRM-free games" with real life friends on a television-sized monitor?

Re:Linux + DRM

[yincrash]

The non-DRM (non-steamworks) games do not require Steam to be running, otherwise that would be using the DRM.... You were probably trying to run one that did have DRM.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Ash Vince]

Incorrect. Steam is a DRM and distribution scheme, in that it binds your purchase to your account, and you need to be authenticated to access that account. Your non-DRM games are inaccessible unless you are logged in to Steam, either Online or Offline. I know, from personal experience, that Offline Mode isn't for when your connection fails, as it requires you to cache your credentials prior to going Offline to work. You're SOOL if your router craps out and you can't tether your smartphone to enable Offline Mode. It's for when you're taking your library away from your network connection in a planned fashion, e.g. your laptop on holiday.

Yup, and of course the real problem is not steam. Its that most people producing games that require payment hate people ripping them off so much they insist on some sort of DRM to try and prevent this (even if it doesn't work they still want it to try).

Saying this, I am going to go home now and close Steam, then try and browse to Braid in the file structure of my Steam installation. If I can run it without logging in to Steam, I will take all I've said about it back. I don't think that will be the case, though.

I dont either, they guy who created Braid used their online savegame feature so at the very least you will lose your progress. It is probably possible to develop a game and publish it on steam with no DRM but that nobody uses it. The question is do developers ever want to leave it all to trust after they have decided to charge people for the game in the first place?

Re:Linux + DRM

[TheLink]

The middleman often provides the service of letting you know of the indie developer's product.

If done well it's better than googling for games that you might like, and possibly worth paying for.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is an operating system, not a belief system. It lets me use my computer how I want to, and the day it gets in the way of that I will swap to something else. If I want to install DRM laden software onto Linux, who are you to judge?

Coward, Anonymous Coward.

Re:Linux + DRM

[geminidomino]

Steam itself is not DRM.

Patently false. While Steam might occasionaly serve to let you download DRM free games (the Humble Bundles come to mind) which continue to work with steam uninstalled, you MUST have a valid Steam account to play the vast majority of games you purchase from the service, indie or otherwise, ON TOP of any other DRM which might be loaded onto the game.

If you're cool with buying cheap games, with the understanding that you will have to bend over for whatever shit they feel like shoving into the unilaterally modified contract down the line, then so be it. Cop to it and don't let anyone try to talk you out of it.

But don't lie.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't dismiss something just because it can do more than what you need. Nobody forces you to pirate with bittorrent or murder your wife with a kitchen knife either.

Oh for the love of... Is that you posting anonymous again Hans??!

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Months? I moved recently and Steam forgot my user info after a couple days offline.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Nemyst]

Except he's right. Steam is not DRM. Steamworks is the DRM, and it's not mandatory.

You're missing the point: it's not Steam or Valve's fault if the games you buy use DRM. It's the publisher's decision. If the game wasn't on Steam, it'd have another form of (likely much more annoying/shitty) DRM. What Steam provides is fairly mild DRM (yes, I say mild, because honestly I prefer having an account that adds a lot of value to my games versus limited activation, phone home schemes, or plain and simply unreliable bullshit ala StarForce).

But Steam doesn't force anyone to use the DRM in their games.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Bengie]

No one "needs" a distribution platform, it just makes it nicer to manage games. Not to mention coordinating with your friends, seeing what they're doing, etc.

If you're the kind of person who likes to play solo games and doesn't have the internet/friends, then yes, Steam is a waste.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue is that this requires knowledge that your average person wouldn't know how to do, a form of DRM by obscurity. While in China Steam blocked me from playing my games for over a month that I paid for and already installed. It is DRM.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Bengie]

The belief system is completely separate of Linux. Any logical person would use and make free programs because the best programmers program for fun. The entire belief system that surrounds the Linux is just a bunch of religious bigotry that hurts what Linux really is, a great piece of work created by the community to the betterment of everyone.

The general community around Linux does not reflect the core of what Linux is. Most interviews of core developers are level and logical, but you get the Linux zealots and any chance of a discussion it thrown out the window.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Hail Stallmans? That'd be for pennance to the Church of the GNU. Don't you mean, Hail Torvalds'?

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Desura is no steam but it's something.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Hail Stallman, full of gnu, the 1337 is with thee; blessed art thou amongst activists, and blessed is the fruit of thy keyboard, GPL. Holy Stallman, Giver of GPL, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Copyleft FSF, Boston, MA, 1989

Re:Linux + DRM

[skine]

I think that the reason I can't switch to a Linux-only setup is the vocal minority who believe that, since Linux is FOSS, everything that runs on Linux should be FOSS.

This provides the benefit that for everything you need, there is a free version.

However, there are things I want, and these tend to be harder to find on Linux. That is, unless you're fine with suffering through a potentially unstable or severely handicapped version on Wine.

Re:Linux + DRM

[_xeno_]

Are you aware that Steam locks you out if you play in "offline mode" for too long?

Or my personal favorite, to enable "offline mode" at all, you must be connected to the Internet.

Of course, the reason I wanted to use "offline mode" in the first place was that I didn't have an Internet connection at the moment! But, no, as far as Gabe is concerned, you're supposed to plan ahead for an unexpected major Internet outage in your area.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Patch86]

The Linux "belief system" is codified by the GPLv2 license. That's not the GPLv3 licence, not the BSD license, but the GPLv2 license. If the belief system were anything other than this, they could have changed their licensing model long ago.

As long as Valve obey the terms of the GPLv2 license, they are fulfilling their obligations to the Linux community- both actual and philosophical. That means they need to release a copy of the code that they use on the products they ship; and that's it. Hopefully any changes or additions they make can be made use of back upstream.

Re:Linux + DRM

[MysteriousPreacher]

The preferred moniker is GNU/Torvalds.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Areyoukiddingme]

Nominated for Best of Slashdot 2013. And here it is only January...

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux might not be a belief system, but GNU/Linux is.

Re:Linux + DRM

[geekoid]

No it is not. It is a platform that can be used that way should the people putting out the game wish it to be.

"but ultimately it restricts your use of the games."
oh?

Re:Linux + DRM

[geekoid]

Except the use of steam gives them wide access. So they actually make more money, overall.

Re:Linux + DRM

[geekoid]

Only games that use steamworks have DRM.

Note the period.

Re:Linux + DRM

[geekoid]

how do you have a working Linux bocx is every single thing on it is FOSS?

Can you do anything with it? Who makes the drivers? the firmware? where did you find DOSS Disk drive firmware?
What is you BIOS?
Or maybe everything isn't FOSS?

Re:Linux + DRM

[Sigg3.net]

Linux is an operating system, not a belief system.

Heretic! Heathen! Infidel!

If you repent and say three Hail Stallmans we'll let you off this time...

Whoa there! I wasn't expecting a Spanish Inquisition!

Re:Linux + DRM

[Sigg3.net]

You are referring to positive freedom, as in being able to go where you want etc.

Stallman's Freedoms are meant to be a protection of positive freedoms beyond just using it (being able to construct a bicycle to go where you want even faster etc).

Freedom and doing whatever you want are not identical. You may choose to blow your head out to cure a headache or other such things that are harmful to your freedom, even if it is what you want.

Stallman is idealistic and not very pragmatic. His message, however, is worth reflecting on.

I'm too tired atm but you get the point.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Sigg3.net]

AFAIK there are no consumer grade Free computers. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be desirable. If people could download shape files to print their own computer in e.g. a country of few resources for their benefit it would be great.

Atm, we must take reality into account and use what we can.

Re:Linux + DRM

[strikethree]

Steam itself is not DRM. My library contains lots of DRM free games. On the other hand it also contains certain games which come with the same DRM as the boxed version. If you want to make a point buy the DRM free indie games on Steam and and don't buy the DRM ridden ones.

Lies lies lies. Steam itself *IS* DRM. Let's see you play those supposedly "no DRM" games without a fucking internet connection. Go ahead and say offline mode is an option. It is NOT. It is a temporary grace period while you get your connection fixed.

Steam itself IS DRM.

Re:Linux + DRM

[strikethree]

Steam IS the DRM. Let's see you play those DRM-free games without Steam running. Can't? Oh, so Steam needs to be running and it must have an internet connection or else it will refuse to run. Offline mode? Sure. Go ahead and try to use offline mode while you are traveling. What is that? Steam won't start in offline mode? Oh my. Have fun with your DRM-free games that you can not play because Steam is not DRM.

(Yes, I travel a lot. Yes, your efforts at claiming that Steam is not DRM cause me to feel bitterness.)

Re:Linux + DRM

[Kartu]

This vacation I've played Torchlight II in offline mode.
So not sure what you mean by "won't start".
Note that I switched to offline mode while being connected to the Internet.

Re:Linux + DRM

[MysteriousPreacher]

A western-owned account suddenly being accessed from a Chinese IP smells like a compromised account. In the past seen a pretty big chunk of account hacking and credit card fraud coming from China. I'm guessing that Steam has some kind of fraud detection that tracks suspicious behaviours, and suspends accounts (or at least blocks possible damaging actions) when there's a reasonable chance of it being a compromised account.

Realistically, it's about as normal as going from not traveling at all, and never spending more than a few hundred dollars on a card, to hitting 5 countries in 5 days, making large purchases in each one. No wonder the credit card company would suspend the card or at least attempt to contact you.

Main problem I see here is that it presumably took a month to fix after you had first contacted support.

Re:Linux + DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is do developers ever want to leave it all to trust after they have decided to charge people for the game in the first place?

If people don't want to pay for a game, they'll just get a cracked version from The Pirate Bay or somewhere. So the real question is, do developers want to piss off the people who are actually willing to pay, potentially pushing them to the pirated version because the pirated version offers the better experience?

Re:You can see where their naming convention is go

[binarylarry]

Word from Redmond is that Microsoft is going to attempt to clone Steam now.

They're working on a competitor called "Shaft."

CEO Steve Ballmer even said he "can't wait to Shaft his customers, it's going to be the biggest thing since squirting on the Zune. It's going to totally fucking kill Steam and Linux off."

2013

[gmuslera]

Maybe won't be the year of the linux desktop, but with that, and a few android based gaming consoles could be the year of the linux game console.

Re:2013

[Anonymous Coward]

More like 2007. PS3 runs Linux. Pretty sure Wii does too.

Re:2013

[Anonymous Coward]

PS3 had the ability to run linux stripped out of it. The base OS is custom, and not Linux.

The Wii may be able to boot a Linux through a hack, but it was never intended to, and does not in its stock form run any version of Linux.

(For that matter, the Dreamcast can run Linux, but it didn't by default. This is a more a matter of 'given time, people will port Linux to anything with an MMU and some things without it'.)

Re:2013

[tepples]

PS3 runs Linux.

Until Sony's change of heart, after which system updates deleted Other OS.

Pretty sure Wii does too.

Nintendo never authorized this, and system updates deleted the Homebrew Channel several times.

Perhaps 2013 might be the year of the console with a wholehearted commitment to Linux.

Re:2013

[Noctis-Kaban]

I've actually been telling people since i knew they were working on linux that a steam linux distro and maybe even a console would be the next logical steps.. oh how they laughed at me. WHO's LAUGHIN NOW! XD

Re:2013

[CronoCloud]

The base OS is custom, and not Linux.

That's right, though the "GameOS" does use open source code. Take a look at the license information in a PS3's System>About Playstation 3

You'll see mentions of cairo, webkit, NetBSD, FreeBSD, libungif (Including Eric S. Raymond's name), expat, Freetype2, libxml2, etc. You'll even see Theo de Raadt's name!

I've seen Ogg notices in game manuals too I think.

Re:2013

[CronoCloud]

Until Sony's change of heart, after which system updates deleted Other OS.

That's not quite the right way to say it. The firmware update is not forced, you can decline it, in fact the firmware update requires you to confirm the update TWICE if you've got an OtherOS capable system, and keep OtherOS. You'll lose access to PSN and games that require more recent firmware, but that's the tradeoff.

Re:2013

[tepples]

Until Sony's change of heart, after which system updates deleted Other OS.

That's not quite the right way to say it. The firmware update is not forced [...] You'll lose access to PSN and games that require more recent firmware, but that's the tradeoff.

In that case, Sony had a change of heart about continuing to produce games for the platform "PlayStation 3-that-still-runs-Other-OS".

Re:2013

[Kartu]

Sony's OS is again Linux, nevertheless, whether they remove Other OS or not.

Re:2013

[tepples]

Sony's OS is again Linux

Since when does Linux underlie PlayStation 3's GameOS mode? Or were you referring to the Linux kernel underlying Android on Xperia phones?

Ports overload

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with all the ugly ports and "USB port dedicated for keyboard". They better have bluetooth for all the inputs, wifi, and miracast. Only wire you need should be for power.

Re:Ports overload

[h4rr4r]

Miracast is too laggy for these kinds of video games. No one wants to play an FPS and deal with compression artifacts and latency from miracast.

Bluetooth would be simple enough to add with a usb adaptor. Real gamers will probably want a wired connection anyway. No fun in losing a match when the wireless gets fritzy.

Re:Ports overload

[slim]

Miracast is too laggy for these kinds of video games. No one wants to play an FPS and deal with compression artifacts and latency from miracast.

"These kinds of games"? None of the games I've bought from Steam are FPSs.

Re:Ports overload

[marcosdumay]

Ugly? This thing ataches to the back of the TV, you won't ever see it.

Those ports look like very good news, a keyboard will make the box PC-like (wireless keyboards still need a USB port), those SATA ports mean you'll be able to use it as a nice media center, and a network port means you'll be able to use a reliable high speed wired connection. Also, more ports won't hurt, less ports will.

But yeah, you are rignht in a point. If it requires those wires, it will be bad. It's great to make the ports available, it isn't good to require using them.

Re:Ports overload

[h4rr4r]

Well it is too laggy for anything but casual games, is that all you buy on steam? Would you like to see them after they are compressed poorly to minimize that latency?

Re:Ports overload

[h4rr4r]

Not all wireless keyboards need a USB port, bluetooth units for example.

I think requiring HDMI is fine, nothing beyond that. Miracast nor any other solution like it is truly suited to playing anything but casual games.

Re:Ports overload

[slim]

Is there a correlation between "casual" and "latency-sensitive"?

I imagine Civ V would work fine. As we learned when all that fuss about OnLive was going on, Xbox GTA4 has more latency than a typical OnLive game running on a server on a WAN.

Re:Ports overload

[VGPowerlord]

Miracast is too laggy for these kinds of video games. No one wants to play an FPS and deal with compression artifacts and latency from miracast.

"These kinds of games"? None of the games I've bought from Steam are FPSs.

Maybe you don't, but Steam is by Valve, and Valve makes FPS games almost exclusively (the major exception being DOTA 2).

Re:Ports overload

[slim]

Sure, fine. But there are many, many more non-Valve games on Steam than there are Valve ones.

Re:Ports overload

[VGPowerlord]

Sure, fine. But there are many, many more non-Valve games on Steam than there are Valve ones.

My point was apparently too subtle, so I'll come right out and say it: Valve is the one writing the specs.

Re:Ports overload

[slim]

Ack, be explicit.

I think what you're saying is:

  - Valve write FPS games
  - Valve are specifying this hardware
  - Therefore Valve will specify hardware suitable for FPSs
  - Miracast is too laggy for FPSs
  - Therefore Valve won't specify systems using Miracast

It's more or less logically sound. But Gabe Newell's on record as saying that the low-grade SteamBoxes *will* use Miracast or similar. So one of the axioms must be wrong.

My guess is that Valve doesn't agree that Miracast lag is unacceptable.

I hate the case

[drinkypoo]

Wake me up when people start making consoles that stack again

Re:I hate the case

[h4rr4r]

They make too much heat for that.
If they let you stack it, it would have to be bigger and actually have adequate ventilation. That would cut into their margins and not look cool.

Re: I hate the case

[Urza9814]

Like what? When was there ever a console that would stack? I've never seen one...maybe you could claim the original X-box, but that's all I can think of and even that wouldn't work all that well. Most of the others I know of, for CDs or cartridges, were all top-loading....

Re:I hate the case

[macs4all]

Wake me up when people start making consoles that stack again

The "Piston" is anything but new. IIRC, it was originally marketed as some sort of "alternate form-factor" "business" computer. I saw the literature for this thing (under a different name) about two years ago. At that time, the "selling point" was that it was a semi-modular, semi-single-board sort-of "industrial computer", where various "options" could be BTO-ed, and that had some sort of proprietary "multi-user-clustering" feature baked-into the OS and hardware, that would allow multiple KVMs to be hooked up to one of the "satellite" units, and then those would share actual computing resources in a "cluster hub" box. Seemed like kind of a good idea; but it ended up being no cheaper than using a bunch of generic PCs. The "Piston" looks exactly like one of the "satellite" boxes. I wish I could remember what it was called that time it failed...

Re: I hate the case

[Anonymous Coward]

There was the original NES (not the Famicom, which was more like an SNES, or the later top-loader revision), which was boxy enough to stack in theory.

Re: I hate the case

[drinkypoo]

There was a slot-loading SegaCD, too. It was a POS but that was Sega's fault, not an inherent problem. And the 360 stacks, believe it or not, just don't cover the holes.

Re:I hate the case

[QuasiSteve]

Would you like them all to have the same dimensions so that you're not building an oblong pyramid with every addition of device, too?

As much as I prefer nice perpendicular-angled boxes myself, that is more of an aversion to convex sides that make it impossible to stack anything on top of them - or them on top of anything - than it is about the actual angles. Looks like this thing's X shape will happily let it stand on a flat surface on all 4 sides, and anything else will happily lay flat on it.

Most likely, though, I would just put it in the furniture meant for all the audio/visual and the odd book - which currently only has 2 devices stacked (PVR/DVD combo and DVD player (plays all regions, no hacky firmware for the PVR/DVD available)).

Re:I hate the case

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, having steam come out the top is probably a marketing feature.

Re: I hate the case

[Anonymous Coward]

PS2.

Re:I hate the case

[L4t3r4lu5]

I quite like the case; It wouldn't offend the lady of the house to have it sat near the TV, which is exactly where it would be.

They show it mounted to the VESA mounting on the back of the monitor. How am I supposed to mount the TV to the wall mounting bracket?

Re:I hate the case

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy your coma.

Re:I hate the case

[slim]

There's precedent for that. For example there are Raspberry Pi cases which mount on the VESA screw holes. It's a good option, but you do need alternative options, if you want to use the VESA mounting for something else.

Re: I hate the case

[jones_supa]

When was there ever a console that would stack?

Well, obviously the PS2 stacks. The slim version is top-loading though.

Re: I hate the case

[h4rr4r]

PS2, NES, Colecovision if you took the controllers out, and most top loading CD systems if you were willing to unstack them to change games.

Re: I hate the case

[marcosdumay]

The Wii also stacks. The PS2 stacked, but the PS3 doesn't.

Re:I hate the case

[jones_supa]

I hate the case

I love it! The mini-Tezro makes a nice package. A little minus comes from its grilles of shiny aluminum -- if I owned one I would soon paint them matte black, like the rest of the case.

Re:I hate the case

[L4t3r4lu5]

Oh certainly, and the VESA mount goes unused on my PC monitors. However, if this is to be a games console, and it is to be linked to a TV in a living room, I know more people with TVs that are wall mounted than not. I can't help but think that this is an oversight on their part.

Re: I hate the case

[VGPowerlord]

I can think of 3 consoles that stack:
NES front-loading model
PS2 (up until the PSTwo)
Wii
The Xbox 360 to a certain extent.

Re:I hate the case

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Wake me up when people start making consoles that stack again

I curse the process by which rack compatibility for A/V gear somehow became a "Wow, you must be crazy rich and want a $50k system installed by specialist contractors, or you are a roadie and only buying musical gear, not home theater stuff' feature.

Most of it is still roughly the right width, and light enough that a simple two-post setup built into the basic crap MDF enclosures that TVs are placed on would be able to support it; but no not even optional rack ears, and a proliferation of weird-shaped set-top boxes...

Re: I hate the case

[Admiral Llama]

How could you forget the Pioneer LaserActive? That bitch was rackable. How about the 3DO??? Huh? Ppfft... and you call yourself a gamer.

Re:I hate the case

[tepples]

Was it called NComputing? My last employer tried it as a way to cheat on Microsoft licensing costs before we switched half the business to web apps running in Ubuntu.

Re: I hate the case

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo.

Re:I hate the case

[macs4all]

Was it called NComputing? My last employer tried it as a way to cheat on Microsoft licensing costs before we switched half the business to web apps running in Ubuntu.

No. Doesn't look the same. The product I'm thinking of looked EXACTLY like the "Piston", even the "ports" side.

The possibility remains that I'm conflating two different products. But I DEFINITELY recognize that "form factor".

Re: I hate the case

[drinkypoo]

Yeah, I forgot about the fat PS2 entirely, I knew I had a better case than this. Also the TG16 had pretty fair stackability.

Re:I hate the case

[drinkypoo]

Would you like them all to have the same dimensions so that you're not building an oblong pyramid with every addition of device, too?

I would, but I would settle for a decent aspect ratio so that my ziggurat is structurally stable. But since you ask: In my fantasy world, all consoles are front-loading (slot, tray, caddy, hopefully flash memory, I could give a shit though) and a fragment of the footprint of a stereo component, so that they can be gracefully integrated into a stereo cabinet.

Re: I hate the case

[drinkypoo]

Oh man, I am right now trying to figure out how to kick myself in my own ass efficiently for forgetting the 3DO. I opened one to clean it out because it didn't play. Then it still didn't play but it sounded funny. Because I am a genius I had routed a flexible circuit through the path of a case screw, so I wound up having to solder around it, which worked fine. This taught me not to reinstall redundant case screws into my personal consoles... and also reminded me to pay attention. But apparently, not enough to remember the 3DO...

Like most geeks I have owned most of the consoles out there at some point. No Neo-Geo and no Wonderswan, no PS3 in fact and I'm not planning to buy Nintendo's new marvel, but I've had damned near everything else. I might have missed one of the Atari consoles too. I only regret getting rid of the Vectrex.

Re: I hate the case

[geekoid]

the PS3 stacks. it's just wobbly.

Console that stack,. The ,lamest excuse to whine about something I have heard in a long time. And I've been coming here for 14 years~!

Re:I hate the case

[geekoid]

I want the to fit together like a Chinese puzzle box.
Also, I would like to create a device that converts the expansion of the universe into electricity and chocolate bars.

Not *the* steam-box

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just *a* steam-box, just a few days ago Ben Krasnow (Valve hardware designer) said that steambox would appear at GDC.

Re:Not *the* steam-box

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like most articles concerning this news have their source from: http://www.golem.de/news/pc-spielekonsole-steam-box-ohne-windows-1212-96609.html

Which says in the second last paragraph (the only references to GDC and E3:

"Es wird also spannend, ob es bereits auf der Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2013, die vom 25. bis zum 29. März 2013 in San Francisco stattfindet, erste konkrete Hardwarevorstellungen von Valve geben wird, oder ob sich das Unternehmen noch bis zur großen US-Spielefachmesse E3 2013 gedulden wird, die vom 11. bis zum 13. Juni 2013 in Las Vegas stattfindet." - golem.de

Which more or less freely translates to:

"So it will get exciting whether there will be already first concrete hardware announcements from Valve at the Game Developers Conferece (GDC) 2013 which is held from the 25th until the 29th of March 2013 in San Francisco or whether the company will stay patient until the big US-gamingfair E3 2013 which is held from the 11th until the 13th of June 2013 in Las Vegas."
(I'm German myself)

It doesn't really sound like Ben Krasnow said that (the) steambox would be announced at GDC (or E3).
Maybe I'm missing something (if someone knows more let me know pls), but it seems to me more like this is a production of the media.

Re:Not *the* steam-box

[Anonymous Coward]

And what makes you think that? Got any citations? This could well be THE SteamBox touted by Newell and co. It's probably just that the company which made the HW decided to have it previewed at CES before having Valve make the big announcement at GDC. Note the lack of detailed specs which definitely hints at the commitment to ensure that the components remain in secret before the big announcement; this is quite typical of consumer electronics releases.

The interwebs are overflowing of reports that this could be the device.

It's even on bbc:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20949071

999$ for a console?

[Skinny Rav]

X7A, on which Piston is based, costs 999$. Good luck gathering adoption at this price point.

Re:999$ for a console?

[slim]

Make enough of them, and that price will come right down.

Re:999$ for a console?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even at half that price the "Steam box" would fail against the established console market on just about every level if not every level.
 
I hate to say it but I think we're going to see this be vaporware within a year. I can buy a good mid-grade PC for half the price and have every Steam title open to me, not just the ones that valve decides to port. Tell me again why I'd want this console?

Re:999$ for a console?

[slim]

I was thinking more like a quarter, or less. It's the difference between niche market, limited production runs, versus mass market and huge production runs.

These should be cheaper to churn out that $300 beige boxes.

Re:999$ for a console?

[Mike Frett]

As much as I respect Valve, if they can't push thing under $200, it's DOA. And to be honest I thought this was going to be a Console like a PS3 or Xbox; not a PC, I have a nice Linux box already.

Re:999$ for a console?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the PS3 was launched at $500 for the 20GB version and $600 for the 60GB version. Not saying Valve has the market position of Sony, but still...

Re:999$ for a console?

[Anonymous Coward]

But I won't need to buy games for it, because I already have them in my Steam account. Win.

And since Half Life 3 will be exclusive for this little companion cube, we don't have a real choice, right?

Remember, it was Half Life 2 which made Steam big.

Re:999$ for a console?

[viperidaenz]

If Half Life 3 is exclusive to a mini PC with 5+ year old hardware, is it really going to be big?
It's got an Athlon 64 in it, its total power rating is 60 watts. That's going to leave 40 watts for RAM, Motherboard, Flash and GPU.

Re:999$ for a console?

[KermodeBear]

For a bare bones system, sure. But it makes sense that these machines, like the typical console, will be sold at a loss. The money will be made up through purchases made through Steam. Loss leaders are a normal part of business.

Re:999$ for a console?

[Patch86]

If you were paying the full price for console hardware, the XBox 360 and PS3 probably would have come in somewhere around that mark when they were new too. They were only cheaper because they were sold at a loss, cross-subsidised by the game licensing cost.

Which does raise an interesting question about Valve's business model for this console. Either they're going to be selling a games console at 4x the price of their rivals, or they're going to need to subsidise the hardware with profits from their Steam shop. And if that's the case, presumably we're talking about some combination of a) higher fees for developers selling through Steam, b) higher prices for games on their Steam shop (for PC/Linux as well perhaps), or c) lower profit margins for Valve.

Re:You can see where their naming convention is go

[VGPowerlord]

Word from Redmond is that Microsoft is going to attempt to clone Steam now.

They're working on a competitor called "Shaft."

So... new version of "Games for Windows â" LIVE"?

Sony and Microsoft have opened themselves up

[Anonymous Coward]

To this kind of thing by waiting too long for a product line refresh. Gamers, like myself, are looking at the graphics and capabilities of modern PCs and seeing their consoles (a PS3 in my case) looking slow and antiquated. With no prospect of a new console generation from either of the two major manufacturers why not try to move into their space with a fresher platform, same development process as for PC games and much more power than the current consoles. If it ran BF3 I'd order it as soon as I could.

Not the console you were looking for

[Anonymous Coward]

The concept is surprising because it is more a PC and less a console. With several hardware configurations, a luxury price ($500 - $1000) and upgradeable components, the Steam Box is not a fixed development target, but simply another form of PC. A fixed configuration would have been a more attractive target for a publisher. Many of them shy away from PC due to the QA nightmare of supporting an infinite variety of graphic cards and hardware configurations.

Emulator

[djscoumoune]

I hope an emulator gets made soon.

Re:Emulator

[slim]

Not sure if you're joking. I don't imagine there will be any games for this system that are not also available on good ol' Steam for Windows.

Or, on Steam for Linux. Looks like it's only supported on Ubuntu for now, but surely that'll change?

Re:Emulator

[CronoCloud]

I found instructions on how to get it to work on Fedora (involving alien)

Re:Emulator

[Patch86]

Presumably the list of games on a Steam Box will be more or less identical to the list of games on the Linux client, seeing as they're exactly the same client, OS and style of hardware. Indeed, my theory is still that the Steam for Linux client is simply a happy by product of the Steam Box project; a "why not seeing as we've done all the work already" thing.

tsk tsk

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I thought valve were serious. This thing is D.O.A.

Possible $1000 price point?

[kelemvor4]

I think they have a serious problem if they think a device costing anywhere near $1k will compete with the likes of Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii U. It would be a high end niche device only for folks that are also buying giant screen 4k tv's this year. I think they'll need to target $300 or less to have a chance of it taking off. People put $1k or more into PC's because you can (and most do) use them for a hell of a lot more than just video games.

Re:Possible $1000 price point?

[tepples]

People put $1k or more into PC's because you can (and most do) use them for a hell of a lot more than just video games.

But they haven't shown themselves willing to put these PCs into living rooms. Some genres, such as cooperative platformers, fighting games, and party games, just work better on a big screen with real-life friends in person than on a desk with strangers hundreds of miles away.

Re:Possible $1000 price point?

[Nemyst]

Xi3 looks like a small corporation. They likely don't have the kind of economies of scale that Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo have. They also probably have fairly high margins to compensate for their low volume.

With Valve putting their weight behind it, however, I'd expect production to ramp up, hardware makers to be interested in partnerships, and margins to shrink. Heck, Valve could even sell it at a loss or bundle Steam gift cards to sweeten the deal.

Re:Possible $1000 price point?

[CronoCloud]

Some genres, such as cooperative platformers, fighting games, and party games, just work better on a big screen with real-life friends in person than on a desk with strangers hundreds of miles away.

They do? Maybe for 10 year olds playing games after school with their babysitter, or family dragging out the wii once or twice a year at get togethers and having some laughs while flailing around...but for eveyrone else.... you CAN play those games over the network.

I know you're still stuck in that "Babysitter with a couple of kids with a SNES connected to an SDTV" mindset but it's time to grow up. Playing games with online friends can be every bit as fun as doing so with non-online friends. Not just PC-centric games but other games as well.

Re:Possible $1000 price point?

[geekoid]

It's still better in person. For many reason, mostly because sitting the the same room you can much more easily maintain sever channel of conversations at once... and play to see who pays for the food.

But I'm not sure why he thing you can only play with strangers.
Plus all your friends were strangers once.

Re:Possible $1000 price point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Valve are planning three steam boxes, or three versions of it, with there being a good, better and best. I not sure it will be too big a deal if this is their top end model, just so long as their cheap model doesn't cost too much more than the current consoles.

No, it's not!

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is not an operating system, it's a kernel.

Re:You can see where their naming convention is go

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at least useful for crafting them. And specs call for 3 wood, 1 iron ingot, 1 redstone, and 4 blocks of cobble.

Re:You can see where their naming convention is go

[BeansBaxter]

Get an Ax!

Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak

[tepples]

Consoles meant never having to look on the box and see if I needed yet another upgrade to play a game.

"Never" is a strong word. Several games for Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 required a RAM expansion cartridge.

And if I was, I would just build my own PC and connect it to my TV (why bother with Valve's box?).

Valve is targeting the mass market, which has shown itself unwilling to connect a device marketed as a "computer" to a display marketed as a "television". To the mass market, computers are for desks and consoles are for living rooms. See previous comments.

Re:Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak

[AmiMoJo]

Valve is targeting the mass market, which has shown itself unwilling to connect a device marketed as a "computer" to a display marketed as a "television". To the mass market, computers are for desks and consoles are for living rooms. See previous comments.

They are not targeting that market at all. The thing has a USB port dedicated to keyboard input, for example. Most people don't want to play an FPS with the keyboard on their knees and mouse on a cushion. Most of the current games on Steam require a keyboard and/or mouse to play.

Their promo material is terrible, but what they are trying to do is provide a single device with a fixed spec that you know will run particular games well. In a year or two an upgrade will be offered that, like the latest iteration of iPhone, is more powerful and review sites will tell you runs the latest games much better than the old hardware. It takes the guesswork out of buying new graphics cards or more RAM and trying to tweak your games to run best on your particular system, and eliminates all the hassles like updating drivers and managing the OS.

Re:Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak

[CronoCloud]

Several games for Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 required a RAM expansion cartridge.

Several is an exaggeration, in the N64's case it is "THREE". DK64, Perfect Dark and Majora's Mask. in other words, games requiring expansions are niche cases which is why the meme is: console hardware expansions fail in the market"

Locked down != locked down

[tepples]

Otherwise - it's just another locked down console

There's a difference between "locked down" in the sense of Apple iTrinkets and "locked down" in the sense of Sony and Nintendo products. Apple encourages startups to develop for its iTrinkets; Sony and Nintendo seek only established studios with "financial stability" and "relevant video game industry experience". Is Steam Greenlight closer to Apple's model or to Sony's and Nintendo's?

Re:Locked down != locked down

[CronoCloud]

Sony and Nintendo seek only established studios with "financial stability" and "relevant video game industry experience".

True, because, bluntly put, they don't want a bunch of wannabe game developers making a ton of shovelware tetris/bejeweled/sokoban clones.
  So that's why you "pay your dues" if you want to do a console game. If you're not willing or capable of doing so...you'll have to live with the reality of how things are.

Re:Locked down != locked down

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise - it's just another locked down console

There's a difference between "locked down" in the sense of Apple iTrinkets and "locked down" in the sense of Sony and Nintendo products. Apple encourages startups to develop for its iTrinkets; Sony and Nintendo seek only established studios with "financial stability" and "relevant video game industry experience". Is Steam Greenlight closer to Apple's model or to Sony's and Nintendo's?

Apple encourages startups to develop using their approved methods within the restrictions of their OS and hardware constraints.

My galaxy nexus can be hacked however I want. Samsung / Google won't honor the warranty, but there are no technical restraints. If I build a PC, I can do whatever I want with it. If steam puts bootloader encryption and only allows signed binaries to be executed on this system, it will be as bad (or worse) than apple, but don't try and post a "All hail apple, they're so great" post when their shit is locked down.

Turn-based

[tepples]

Is there a correlation between "casual" and "latency-sensitive"?

Yes. True, there are some turn-based hardcore games, such as the Civilization series that you mentioned. But I imagine that casual games are statistically more likely to be turn-based. Consider Words With Friends, Angry Birds, and the like.

Wall-mounted or not

[tepples]

I know more people with TVs that are wall mounted than not.

Among my family, it's the other way around: most TVs are not wall-mounted. Which is the normal case and which is the edge case?

Five hundred ninety-nine US dollars

[tepples]

As much as I respect Valve, if they can't push thing under $200, it's DOA. And to be honest I thought this was going to be a Console like a PS3 or Xbox

For one thing, Xbox 360 debuted at $399, and PS3 debuted at a price of "five hundred ninety-nine US dollars" that inspired YouTube dance remixes. For another, sometimes it's worth paying more for the box if the games are cheaper, and Steam games tend to run cheaper than console disc games.

Re:Five hundred ninety-nine US dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

PS3 was a Blu-Ray player and had backwards compatibility with the entire* PS2 library which meant that most people already some if not many games for their new system.

How about a fair comparison.

Re:Five hundred ninety-nine US dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

But also they were that price 6 years ago, the market has changed significantly since then. Granted 200 dollars is a bit low of an expectation, but say if they were in the WiiU price range it would be much more appealing to the market. I also doubt any other hardware manufacturer will be aiming for more than 399 with their next console generation.

Also the price difference in Steam games has primarily been a competitive thing, they chop a 10 dollars off the opening week price because they know asking 59.99 for in most cases an inferior port from a console will not sell, but if Steam games get the draw that currently console games have I can see no reason why publishers wont try for price parity with their console brethren.

Re:Five hundred ninety-nine US dollars

[bloodhawk]

The PS3 was also a huge failure on initial launch as it was deemed to expensive by much of the consumer base, it wasn't until they cut the price significantly that the PS3 says actually started to take off. You cannot price a console in the $500+ range and expect mass adoption, it doesn't matter how cool or how powerful the features are.

Re:You can see where their naming convention is go

[geminidomino]

Damn it, Ray! Egon said not to cross the memes.

Steam Contributes to Malware

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll make this short, but it deserves an article of its own.

People pirate software.
Steam requires tethered installation and play.
Pirates have to download cracked versions to avoid Steam.
Pirates also need cracked updates.
The cracked files contain malware.
The malware is used to send spam and for other annoying purposes that affect us all.

Without Steam, there would be fewer zombie PC's in the world. It's a simple fact. Casual pirates would just borrow games from friends. Sophisticated pirates would run clean copies that did not include malware. You can't make the pirates go away -- if you could then it would have been done by now. Steam represents a small incremental increase in revenue to game companies and a huge cost to everyone in the form of botnets etc. Well done Valve.

Re:Steam Contributes to Malware

[viperidaenz]

If you stopped making games all together, all problems are solved. No pirates, no malware, no zombie PC's, no spam.

Failboat

[thetoadwarrior]

Seriously, a $1000 console that has the expectation of being upgraded? Valve doesn't quite get console gaming it seems.

Some Steam titles will play on Piston

[tepples]

Piston will have backward compatibility with many popular titles in the Steam library, which means that many people will already have licenses for several games that play on it. True, it's not the vast majority of Steam games, but Xbox 360's original Xbox emulator didn't cover the vast majority of original Xbox games either. I don't know whether it'll do Netflix and the like, but that'd be a plus.

Re:Some Steam titles will play on Piston

[CronoCloud]

Piston will have backward compatibility with many popular titles in the Steam library,

41 is not "many" taking into account how many games are on Steam.

but Xbox 360's original Xbox emulator didn't cover the vast majority of original Xbox games either.

True, but CECH(A/B/E) Model PS3's play ALL PS2 games in addition to ALL PSone games. This steambox aint gonna have much of a library because Steam is just a delivery system, not a platform. The games are developed by other companies, do you think Turbine is going to go to the trouble of porting LOTRO, or Perfect World port STO, or CCP port EVE? If they haven't to the PS3 or 360, then they sure aren't going to port to Linux because the market is so small.

I don't know whether it'll do Netflix and the like, but that'd be a plus.

There is no Linux Netflix client, it is not likely to ever happen.

Re:Some Steam titles will play on Piston

[tepples]

There is no Linux Netflix client

I agree with you that there is no client for desktop Linux distributions. But there is a client for Android, which uses Linux as its kernel, because the market for Android is so much larger.

Re:Some Steam titles will play on Piston

[Tyrion Moath]

... or CCP port EVE?

Don't know about the others you listed, but EVE runs fine on WINE from what I understand. There's even a section on the official forums for Linux users: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=topics&f=274

Don't count on them making an official executable for it, however.

Re:Some Steam titles will play on Piston

[geekoid]

If Valve put the money for it, it would happen.

Re:Some Steam titles will play on Piston

[CronoCloud]

Valve isn't big enough to pay a large number of developers to do native Linux ports.

Linux Mint, Steam and My Laptop

[RudyHartmann]

There are lots of people claiming that the little SFF computer called the Piston does not have the power to adequately run Steam games under Linux. But I have Linux Mint KDE 14 AMD64 installed on an HP nx9420 laptop which is 5 years old. It only has a dual core 2.16GHz processor, the equivalent of an Nvidia GT 7900 GPU and 4GB of ram. I was playing Dark Descent, Team Fortress 2 and Killing Floor all weekend. It worked great. If this laptop will do this well, I'm sure that little SFF computer will be just fine also. I wonder if Valve will release them with a subscription like mobile phone companies do.

Re:Linux Mint, Steam and My Laptop

[viperidaenz]

The base model of the Xi3 features a 1.8GHz AMD Athlon 64 processor, 2GB of RAM, and 8GB of flash storage, and retails for US$850 (NZ$1016).

Your 5 year old laptop has more processing power and RAM than this thing.

[source]

Re:Linux Mint, Steam and My Laptop

[RudyHartmann]

The system you have detailed could be inadequate. But I just read that the development system will have this:

The development-stage system in question is known as “Piston,” and it’s based on Xi3s X7A modular system. That system has a quad-core processor, up to 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, up to a terabyte of solid state storage and support for three monitors. The starting price for the X7A is $999. Again, those specs don’t necessarily reflect what’s inside of Piston, or what the price would be if it hit the market.

http://techland.time.com/2013/01/08/xi3s-piston-a-steam-box-emerges-sort-of/

Re:Linux Mint, Steam and My Laptop

[JThundley]

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but Killing Floor is a UT2004 mod. So you're using a 5 year old laptop to play a 9 year old game :p Doesn't make the game any less fun or awesome though :)

Re:Linux Mint, Steam and My Laptop

[RudyHartmann]

Yeah, I know. But it is an improvement from the way things used to be. I only see this gaining inertia too.

Just an Xi3 mini computer

[Anonymous Coward]

That is just an Xi3 mini computer running steam on it. You can buy that hardware and run anything you want today.

Re:You can see where their naming convention is go

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I can't wait to hear from the steamed-up malcontents who feel they've been PissedOn by Balmer, the old Shaft Cranker, and his minions.

BTW - given Microsoft's apparent lack of stellar performance with Windows8, how long before they start calling him 'The mBalmer'?

Size

[LocoMosquito]

Too small for respectable performance. Good enough for Source and Unreal engine 3 (tegra 4 can run UE3 games easily, when ported, off course). Those engines should be part of the past, now when Source 2 and Unreal 4 are announced. Seems like a fail product to me.

Specs chase

[phorm]

The problem being, of course, that sometimes they do release games that the console is under-specced for, resulting in unexpected slowdowns etc

This is especially true when multi-console releases are attempted and the hardware specs don't quite line up. At that point, you've got a game that runs just as poorly on the console as it would on an under-specced PC

ethernet is needed as well

[Joe_Dragon]

ethernet is needed as well not all areas have good wifi and ethernet is better for systems fixed into place.

$1000 game console = end of Valve

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

It might be based on $1000 hardware, but unless they release a game console under $400, then it will be stillborn.

Actually, Steam better sell this thing at a significant loss considering that it is a front end to their walled garden. The Steam Box should be sold like a printer, taking a hit on the hardware and recuperating profit through the sale of content on the platform.

If Valve tries to profit on the sale of hardware to front their Steam service they will be seen as being the same as all the greedy f--ks Gabe has been speaking out against for the last 8 years.

Awesome

[viperidaenz]

I can buy a $300 PC for $850!

steambox

[Anonymous Coward]

http://i49.tinypic.com/scw9pk.png

Better code

[ZombieBraintrust]

I wonder if low spec consoles forces game companies to engineer their code better. A well engineered code engine should provide value all the way up the spec ladder. Of course art assets created for a lower spec don't always scale up the ladder. So it does hold some things back.

Re:You can see where their naming convention is go

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it seems Valve just piston all its customers with its locked-down steam box.

Slashdot Effect is Alive and Well

[Areyoukiddingme]

Contrary to our favorite meme of never reading the article, xi3.com and xi3.org are both slashdotted into oblivion. Not only did we read the article, we searched on the company name mentioned (but not linked) in the article, then followed the links we found. Take THAT, meme!

And why did nobody mention Xi3 when I was babbling about a cube computer a couple weeks ago? I got modded up to +5 Interesting and nobody knew about these guys. Judging by both the moderation of my post and the slashdotting of Xi3, I'm not the only one who thinks the form factor is appealing. With hardware specs as good as any desktop, this thing is really promising. Here's hoping this is the prototype that gets the nod as the official Steambox, so it can benefit from serious mass production and get the price down to something competitive for its specs.

One last thing. Considering the connectors on this thing, it's designed to conveniently connect a bigscreen TV (the standard DisplayPort HDMI-enabled connector) plus two Oculus Rift displays (the mini-DisplayPort connectors with no HDMI). It looks like Gabe Newell decided to use Kickstarter as his source for new hardware ideas when Microsoft made their app-store move. Anybody know if he's found a game controller design there too? Maybe one of those that incorporates a touchscreen, as well as hardware controls? Wouldn't surprise me if he has. And if he hasn't, it's because the hardware guys have missed the boat—somebody needs to fill that space, if it isn't already. Can't have Nintendo alone in the marketplace.

Nobody has written this blog post yet, and I don't have a blog, so I'll say it here: Kickstarter is the new Go To place for angel investors looking for new ideas. You heard it here first.

stupid design

[benthurston27]

Why would a console be a thousand dollars and only have some kind of integrated graphics. Why the emphasis that it be small and power efficient vs. powerful enough to play any game at max settings. I mean does this thing seem like any "gaming" rig you've ever seen? I think they should just compile a list of hardware that can be put together and be "steam" certified and be done with it. Just give the developers something to target.

MAYBE because Valve DOES NOT WANT TO BE NAILED DOW

[SmallFurryCreature]

Maybe, JUST maybe, Valve DOES NOT WANT TO BE NAILED DOWN TO A SPEC FOR HALF A DECADE?

If you are a company that pushes the edge, being stuck on the same hardware for more then half a decade would have to suck. Perhaps Valve is trying to pull what Google did with Chrome, accelerate console development. Sure, you can buy a hopelessly obsolete Xbox or PS4 OR you can buy a Steam Box for the same amount AND get cheaper games that are made with this years tech not last decades. The current consoles are REALLY far behind.

And the current consoles were NOT cheap, you could buy a highly respectable PC for the price of the PS3 at launch and that PC spanked it on EVERY front as evidenced by console games being released on the PC with high resolution texture packs. The new Wii U has mediocre tablet as it gadget but for its price you can buy a perfectly decent mid-range gaming PC. Sure, there are gamers with 1000 dollar videocards but these are hardly needed, a 100 dollar card will already give you performance well above that of a console.

Chrome force MS to get off its ass and also helped speed up Firefox, lets see what Valve can do for console development. And all those who prefer the same gaming hardware for ten years (but replace their phone every year)... they can keep their old shit with memory less then a cheap feature phone.

clear message to MS/Nintendo/Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

With some luck it will make Sony/nintendo/microsoft think twice before annoying its customers?

No backward compatibility on ps4 to ps3 to ps2?
a steambox will run all your games, even the ones made for 386's

Downloaded game tied to the console (wii)
You will be able to redownload your games on a new or secondary steambox with no problem

Monthly fee to play your games online? (Microsoft/Sony)
PC games dont have this unless it is a subscrition based game

I will buy one or two of these for sure!

Disruptive

[tepples]

If you're not willing or capable of doing so...you'll have to live with the reality of how things are.

While I continue to progress slowly toward a more attractive portfolio, I have time to consider: Why is this reality unchangeable?

false logic

[schlachter]

Only that $800 machine you talk about was more like $1,500+ back in 2005 when the XBOX 360 came out. I remember...I did the compare before buying my XBOX in 2005. And and you will have spent money upgrading it since then...it wouldn't be able to play some new games...even on low settings. My XBOX will still play new games for at least 3 yrs.

PC gaming is fine, but it's definitely more costly.

PC gaming without a PC?

[schlachter]

The problem I have with PC gaming is I've been using a Mac since 2007. There aren't many games for the Mac (although it's improving) and I won't buy an additional PC just for gaming. Enter my game console. :)

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