What Valve's Announcements Mean for Gaming

Now that we have the full picture of Valve's efforts to bring PC gaming to the living room (SteamOS, dedicated hardware, and a fresh controller design), people are starting to analyze what those efforts will mean for gaming, and what Valve must do to be successful. Eurogamer's Oli Welsh points out that even if Steam Machines aren't able to take the market away from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, they put us a step closer to the final console generation. "Valve has hopefully sidestepped the most depressing aspect of console gaming: the enforced obsolescence that makes you consign your entire games collection to a dusty cupboard every five years." GamesRadar notes that Valve's approach is fundamentally different from that of the current console manufacturers because it's about putting more power into the hands of the users. "The takeaway from SteamOS, then, is that openness breeds innovation. Valve's putting the very source code of its operating system in the hands of everyone who wants it just to see what happens. Comparatively, Microsoft is pushing its Windows Store, turning Windows into an increasingly closed platform (i.e. one that charges costly development licensing fees and restricts access to certain content providers)." Everyone's curious to see how the controller will perform, so Gamasutra and Kotaku reached out to a number of game developers who have experimented with prototypes already. "[Dan Tabar of indie studio Data Realms] said the configuration map for the controller allows you to do 'pretty much anything.' For example, developers can slice up a pad into quarters, each one representing a different input, or even into eight radial sections, again, each section representing whatever you want, mapping to key combinations, or to the mouse." Tommy Refenes, co-creator of Super Meat Boy, wrote an in-depth description of his experience with the device. He summed up his reaction by saying, "Great Start, needs some improvements, but I could play any game I wanted with it just fine."

Comments

Unless your engine already supports OpenGL

[tepples]

I was under the impression that engines that already support OpenGL won't need too much modification. SteamOS is just a desktop Linux distribution bundled with the Steam client in Big Picture mode. This means it uses the same video drivers and the same APIs as desktop Linux. The only engines that would need extensive modification are the ones that target only Windows and Xbox 360, as the other gaming platforms use OpenGL or something very much like it.

Re:Unless your engine already supports OpenGL

[Rockoon]

Indeed, the AMD API they are proposing is supposed to be much lower level than OpenGL because console developers are used to getting away with being much closer to the metal when they only have 1 hardware target to shoot at. To get an idea of this, in neither OpenGL nor DirectX is there an efficient method of just taking a pointer into video memory and fucking around from the CPU side of things.

But when you look at AMD's APU setup, memory is memory.. video memory and main memory are one and the same.. there is no reason that you shouldn't be able to just go ahead and write to individual texels in a texture efficiently, and so forth.. something quite inefficient on a PC with a dedicated video card in the x16 slot.

AMD plans for this API to be "open" so Intel will be free to implement it on their integrated GPU's as well... NVidia, without its own x86/x64 architecture, will be screwed of course.

Re:Unless your engine already supports OpenGL

[Mike Frett]

Valve wants native ports, not Wine usage. Their strategy for streaming is sort of a Microsoft tactic. Consumers will find Steaming to be cumbersome and eventually demand native ports from publishers, that's valves goal with streaming; Native ports. They've had plenty of time to figure all this out and gather the data. It's a big risk for them, they aren't just going to throw something out there and hope it catches.

In the end we all need to stop thinking about Wine. It's more of a problem, than a solution.

Re:Unless your engine already supports OpenGL

[Curunir_wolf]

The vast majority of triple AAA games aren't ported to the Wii

Just how many AAA AAA AAA games are out there, anyway?

Re::Living Room?

[ichthus]

What the hell are you talking about. Contrary to the Verizon commercials, people aren't watching movies on their phones in subways or coffee shops. They're scarcely watching them in theaters either. Where, then, are they watching them? In ... *cough* the.. ah... LIVING ROOM. Yeah, and people still game there too.

When will the right people get to test controller

[ShiftyOne]

I'd much rather see the headline "pro-gamers get their hands on the steam controller and approve" than anything else. Especially any that use the claw or hammer grips (aka keeping a finger on the a b x y buttons at all times). Game developers aren't necessarily known for being good at their games.

Re::Living Room?

[drinkypoo]

The living room died so many decades ago, and so many cultures that game don't know what that is,

More houses have a living room than bedrooms — in some cultures, they only have one room, and everyone lives in it. Of course, most of those cultures don't have game consoles. However, you may note that many people do in fact have living rooms or their equivalent, and they seem to still be buying consoles and console games. Otherwise it would have been tough for GTAV to smash all previous sales records.

This is the future

[tom229]

This is another company using open platforms, and standards, to sell their services. We've already seen this work extraordinarily well with Android, and being that Steam is already the largest online repository for games, I see this working out well for Valve.

This is a fantastic leap forward for gaming and open standards. Unfortunately Microsoft is just barely figuring out how to poorly copy the declining success of the Apple model... looks like they'll have to play catch up again.

Re:This is the future

[minasoko]

Haha, you Slashdot freedom fighters are so funny. Do you have any idea why Valve was so popular in the first place? It's because they could sell games on Windows, and the games just magically keep on working through the years, from XP => Vista => 7 => 8. And all this thanks to Microsoft, not Valve.

What drivel. No wonder you ACd. Microsoft sell a platform, Valve had a enterprising idea 10 years ago that used the platform and it's been a success. Now Microsoft want to get into Appstores, in typical "me too" Microsoft fashion. This is a threat to Valve's business and so like a responsible company head, Newell is working on a plan B, in case MS decide to make it much harder for Steam to exist on Windows.

And how much did Valve pay Microsoft for all those sold games on Microsoft's platform? Not a goddamn cent. There's no appstore.

Microsoft got paid through Windows sales, it is in their interests to make that platform appealing. They even took the piss by forcing newer Windows releases on gamers using arbitrary restrictions. Do Adobe pay Microsoft every time someone buys Photoshop?

And the REAL irony? Now Valve wants to sell their own app store to Linux gamers

I don't think you know what irony means. And what's the RRP on SteamOS?

Re::Living Room?

[higuita]

Thank you, but i spend all my day at work... where of course, i can't play...
traveling home, i'm driving... so i can't also play
at home, i'm in the couch relaxing... i can play some games in a tablet (not a small phone, forget that) or in the big screen. As most tablet games are simple, if i wan't a more rewarding game i must go the the PC (with linux)... or i can play directly on the TV. Valve helped in both solutions.

Mobile is for kids and teenagers, all rest prefer the office or the couch

I am disappointed in Valve

[asm2750]

I wish Valve would start announcing new games. This console infatuation is getting annoying.

Samsung & Huawei Consoles

[Tim12s]

Nice, due to this we'll have Samsung and Huawei games consoles. Give it all away.

"more power in the hands of the users"

[swampfriend]

What I see is less power in the hands of users as all games become subscription and "early access." The developer is freed from its obligation to ever provide a finished product that actually belongs to the user, rather than being leased or sold "on spec"

Re::Living Room?

[Omestes]

Except that mobile gaming is a completely different beast from living room or PC gaming. Mobile gaming is about quick bites, simple controls, and shallow gameplay (this isn't a bad thing, per se). Mobile gaming is casual, by default. Its hard to get into an epic RPG while on the bus, or in the dentist's office. If I'm going to play something like Skyrim, I'm going to do it in a comfy chair, on a good screen, with mature controls.

Tethering a controller to your phone or tab is counterproductive, since you "un-mobiled" mobile gaming, by forcing someone to carry around a controller as well as their device.

Mobile isn't replacing anything, I wish that fallacy would die. Mobile is supplementing a certain part of traditional markets, but it isn't replacing the core of those markets. Looking at console and traditional game sales back this up, they aren't slowing down in relation to rise in mobile device sales. Nor will they, since they fill a very different niche than traditional consoles and PCs for gaming.

Same with the stupid trope that mobile will magically kill traditional PCs... This is said by people who never used their PC for anything more serious than email and light web browsing. There is very little in my daily computer tasks that can be moved to mobile, outside of light email and web duties. Sure, this is a gap MS is targeting (badly) with the Surface Pro, but suddenly we're not talking mobile anymore, but a traditional laptop with a floppy keyboard and optional touch controls. And still it isn't going to be as good as my large screen for most tasks.

The living room died so many decades ago

I'm now picturing a family of four huddled in their backyard streaming watching movies on a 10" tablet. I feel kind of bad for them, since they could be inside, sitting in their living room watching it on an increasingly affordable giant HDTV.

Re:Consoles have DRM

[DudemanX]

You've been able to add shortcuts to non-Steam games from within Steam since... oh... forever. I've got a shortcut to notepad in Steam that I rename whatever I want so people that I'm friends with can see shit like...

Dudeman
In non-Steam game
Nerdfest has full-blown AIDS

You can make shortcuts to any executable you want and name it anything you want. It's pretty cool.

Re:When will the right people get to test controll

[mechtech256]

The dev behind Super Meat Boy (comically difficult side scroller with a cult following) put up a nice synopsis of his experience testing the controller:

http://tommyrefenes.tumblr.com/post/62476523677/my-time-with-the-steam-controller

Pretty good review for a 3d-printed prototype. Importantly, it seems like it's not fundamentally flawed, and the touchpad based control system works fine in practice.

Re: It means there's now one more API to target.

[techprophet]

Wayland stands in one corner, hailed by the majority of the Linux community. In the other corner stands Canonical's canonical display server, all alone. Given Valve's actions so far, I'd wager a healthy amount of btc on wayland.

If this works out

[drolli]

then Linux really has won. Game consoles are the last piece of customer devices casually used where Linux has not a strong foothold

-e book readers: most based on linux
-all sony entertainment equipment like cameras, television etc (PS3 excluded): Linux
-most medium to high end media players:linux (exclude ipod)
-most phones (except feature phones and iphones): Linux
-netbooks for consumers: chrombook share seems to explode

The last bastion where Linux never got any foothold were all things related to gaming. If steam now makes a "reference design" for a linux based gaming machine, that could settle some battles at ones. This has the potential to kill the PS4 and the XBOX, since every cheap chinese manufacturer can clone the thing. And like android the marketplace will be the cash-cow holding this together.