Valve Announces Steambox, Sort Of

wbr1 writes "A new page has appeared over at Steam with this slightly cryptic text, a countdown, and an image of a console controller. 'Last year, we shipped a software feature called Big Picture, a user-interface tailored for televisions and gamepads. This year we've been working on even more ways to connect the dots for customers who want Steam in the living-room. Soon, we'll be adding you to our design process, so that you can help us shape the future of Steam.' It appears Gabe Newell wants to throw his hat in the console ring now with the Xbox One and PS4 about to be released. The countdown to the announcement is targeted at Monday."

Comments

Re:They've got a good shot at it

[Anonymous Coward]

ACs don't deserve modpoints.

Re:They've got a good shot at it

[hairyfeet]

The user space idiot, a kernel without a userspace is fricking worthless and you and the other flag wavers can mod down ALL you want, but your type were the ones pushing the whole "linux is just a kernel' bullshit...don't like being hoisted on your own petard?

And there are still copies of Win98 out there...you have a point to make? The ENTIRE POINT of the way GPL is set up is sure you can go with an old version and quickly end up with an unsupported mess unless again you are gonna stand here and argue that Valve is gonna hire every. single. team. that has put out a GPL V3 version to support a no longer supported GPL V2 fork?

You can't have your cake and eat it too sparky, either valve spends countless millions supporting an entire GPL V2 userspace that has been abandoned for years, including a good chunk of the UI, network stack, audio subsystems, etc or they have NO CHOICE but to go DRM free which is the kiss of death for a console. Most likely they will do the latter and end up with another Touchpad as no way in hell is Ubisoft, activision, and EA gonna support a fully unlocked hacker friendly console, no way in hell. the piracy rates on the current consoles is high enough but can you imagine with the FOSSie hate for DRM how quickly steambox will have cracks? Even the PC versions won't be cracked as fast.

But mark my words and mark them well, either they spend a boatload of cash running an unsupported abandoned mess or they get fucked on the DRM. Like it or not GPL V3 closed the "TiVo Hole" so no way in hell they can have DRM in Linux, that is by design. Don't blame the messenger, blame business unfriendly RMS.