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Ask Slashdot: Can Valve's Steam Machines Compete Against the Xbox One and PS4?
Nerval's Lobster writes "Valve has announced SteamOS, Steam Machines, and a Steam controller — the components necessary for it to create a viable living-room gaming experience. Valve's strategy with these releases seems pretty clear: create a platform based on openness (SteamOS is a Linux-based operating system), in contrast to the closed systems pushed by console rivals such as Sony and Microsoft. If Valve chooses to release Half-Life 3 in conjunction with its Steam Machines' rollout, it could help create further buzz for the system, given the years' worth of pent-up demand for the next chapter in the popular FPS saga. But can Valve's moves allow it to actually compete against Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony on equal terms? What do you think?"
That's a lot of vapor.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
Yes, it can compete.
No. No one knows if it will.
Yes, it is a stupid question.
Outsell either of those 2? No. Sell a good chunk, and added with people who installed the Steam OS and run their own hardware, total in the millions, help push Nintendo out of the hardware business, and put themselves in a good spot for the generation after this coming one? Sure, that's a possibility.
I think Valve actually wants to approach this by introducing a number of different machines at different spec levels, but all running Steam OS. Then, like how Steam operates now, they sell licenses to a wide variety of games (and possibly applications) that have different levels of system requirements.
The end goal is to reach out into a wide audience of different levels of gamers, from the casual to the hardcore, from puzzle game fans to FPS fans, etc., and to provide different kinds of devices geared towards each audience.
There's a danger of segmentation, of course. But I think the way Valve is approaching this is quite brilliant. The PS4, XBone, and Wii platforms have the advantage of being "do-it-all" machines, but they're also prohibitively expensive (at least in the cases of the PS4 and XBone) and might not be interesting to casuals, fans of games requiring lesser resources, or even hi-end gamer enthusiasts. Valve is taking a page from Android and casting a wide net.
That's what I think!
Price
This is what drew me to Steam, this is what keeps me buying from Steam while my ps3/wii/etc gather dust.
If they keep up the constant sales and fairly good games on the Steam Machine like they're doing now on PC, yes, yes they can.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
...that Half-Life is popular enough among the console crowd to be the system's killer app.
I think this skips over an earlier question we could ask: Is this move by Valve meant primarily to take on the consoles or to be an evolution for PC gaming so they can't be boxed in by Microsoft (or both, or something else entirely)?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Valve has already won. I've owned a computer since the 1980's, and gamed on computers non-stop since then. I already have a steam library of over 1,200 games. I have never owned a console. Although once in my youth I saved up $100 to buy an Atari 2600, but then blew it all playing Defender at the arcade. Living room is for television. Man-cave is for gaming on triple 30" monitors with a custom water cooled desktop computer that the consoles could only dream of powering, with a library of games available that puts the consoles to shame. Not to mention the portability of steam games. I can install and play them on desktop, on my Alienware m17x r3 laptop in a hotel room or back seat of a car, or on my Alienware m11x r3 laptop on the tray table as I fly across the country in an airplane ... one account, many devices. It's nice. Consoles lose in terms of power (can't run triple 30" monitors), price (five game bundles for $5 are frequent), selection (thousands of games), convenience (download easily), sharing (share games with friends with the new steam family share plan), and portability (try gaming with a console in the back seat of a car?).
I own an Xbox 360, a Wii, I owned a Wii U (but was so underwhelmed I brought it back).
I've had several consoles over the years, but I keep going back to PC gaming. My 360 collects dust - it's not worth paying the online tax to even watch netflix on it. The Wii is used for Wii Fit only. My 4 year old son prefers the games on the computer. I don't know why - he just does - with one caveat - they work with a controller.
I was looking at possibly the XBone for the living room - but it won't play 360 titles - and the entry price is very high considering I'd have to restock the titles at ~$60 a pop.
Now that Steam has announced SteamOS, Steam Machines and the Controller - I can kill many birds with one stone. I can buy a modern console for the living room. I can keep my current library of titles (that I've been building since 2006). My son can have a controller that's the same for both devices. I can stream old games, hopefully though there will be enough native releases - because that will be a key point to most people. Now that Steam will offer Family Sharing/Controls, I can finally stop buying for 2 accounts and just focus on building one library. For myself, this is a great solution.
Now, will people who exclusive use PS/Xbox switch? I don't think so easily. First, you have the Madden crowd - good luck getting EA to budge on releasing sports games for the PC again. Then there are the exclusives and the kinect. I know Kinect is a failure to a lot - but it is a great family device and one of the only things I fire the Xbox up for all anymore is stuff like Sesame Kinect...
But - as these machines proliferate - I can see more and more people picking them up. This is pure speculation - but I imagine they will refresh the hardware frequently - like phones and tablets. Being and Open System - I can see many of it's own exclusives - whether whole titles or features in a title. The idea of being able to self-upgrade is phenomenal. I imagine over time these machines will become more than just different form factor PC's - and may offer some sorely needed innovation in the market... SteamOS makes that possible - kind of like an Android for Consoles - just even more open.
The worse case scenario is it doesn't pan out great, and not a lot of manufacturers fizzle out on the idea and SteamOS/Machines become a footnote - but the damage is already done - because a game optimized kernel will exist with opitmized graphics drivers - something sorely lacking for Linux for many years... So even a short term failure could lead to greater things down the road.
"Does Nintendo really think they can compete with Atari, Magnavox, Intellivision, and Coleco with their upcoming 'NES'? Can they really elbow their way into this crowded market full of entrenched and experienced companies?"
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"Does Sony really think they can compete with Sega, Nintendo, NEC and Neo*Geo with their upcoming 'Playstation'? Can they really elbow their way into this crowded market full of entrenched and experienced companies?"
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"Does Microsoft really think they can compete with Sony, Nintendo, Sega, 3D0 and Atari with their upcoming 'Xbox'? Can they really elbow their way into this crowded market full of entrenched and experienced companies?"
Yeah, I think history says it can be done.
I kinda took it differently. When they announced this an Alienware equivalent doesn't come to mind. Instead I get the same picture as the $300-400 budget gaming PC's that I've always built. When the parts are bought in bulk I'm willing to bet that an OEM could assemble a small equivalent set-top box for even cheaper and have a fairly capable system to compete with the $400-500 Sony and MS offerings.
I'm kinda envisioning the Steambox being offered at more of a $250-300 price point. If you want a monster rig you can still build it yourself and run SteamOS.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
SteamOS has a unique problem that no other ecosystem has to deal with: In order to leverage steam's strength, the size of the community, they had to do two things. First, ensure that the catalog of games is playable on the TV, and second, that this userbase can interact with the steam community on PCs. If the system can't do this, it requires a huuuge shift of users in order to make it successful, which requires the kind of investment microsoft did with the XBox.
The second bullet point above leads to an interesting problem if they go down the path of interoperability with PC clients: controllers and mice. PCs have several genres that are unplayable with a controller, and the mouse and keyboard combo offers a significant advantage in almost every kind of competitive gaming and multiplayer. I hope that their controller bridges the gap, and chances are it might.
The touchpad-based movement is a huge change from a joystick. Precision movement on a touch-style pad like that is the only way a controller could handle snap turns and accuracy that muscle movement on a mouse pad offers. The way its set up, I'd expect it to work sort of like the Thinkpad nib. If it works and people adopt it, it will allow people to play things like RTSes, turn-based games like Civ, and a host of other options. Yeah, hotkeys are another important point, but one more easily overcome than the massive gulf that currently exists between the mouse and the analog joystick.
There are other factors that will tie to its success, but I think the future of the system ties to its interoperability with the PC gamers. If it doesn't, its just going to be an also-ran.
When you say you knew that Neo-Geo was expensive I feel as though you were being coy about what premium meant. Neo-Geo was arcade quality games in your home.
More than merely arcade quality, it was identical to arcade hardware, plus extra circuity to modulate audio and video suitable for consumption by TVs, and some superficial physical changes to keep arcade operators and home users from being able to run the same cartridges.
"Does Nintendo really think they can compete with Atari, Magnavox, Intellivision, and Coleco with their upcoming 'NES'? Can they really elbow their way into this crowded market full of entrenched and experienced companies?"
The bottom fell out of gaming in 1983. The entrenched and experienced companies were all twisting in the wind when the NES arrived. A lot of the secret to Nintendo's success in the west was distancing itself from existing video game systems that plug into a tv and billing itself as a toy you plug into the tv. The loss of a joystick was also great in pushing this image, although a feature of the original Famicom and not a change made for the exclusive benefit of taking market share. They also had a great PR machine that drove customer demand while simultaneously strong arming their partners and retailers: no discounting, no consignment, hardware lockout to enforce licensed developers only and bill it as a "quality" seal.
"Does Sony really think they can compete with Sega, Nintendo, NEC and Neo*Geo with their upcoming 'Playstation'? Can they really elbow their way into this crowded market full of entrenched and experienced companies?"
When you consider that Sony's Playstation is less of a from-scratch built platform than it was really a spin-off the SNES, the analogy doesn't make sense. A better analogy for the period for a from-scratch platform from the time period might be 3DO, which you mistakenly placed in your following section. As far as the competitors? SNK's NeoGeo never really hit any big numbers for home use, and NEC's position was obliterated from the west, and they were so desperate in Japan that they began to encourage out-and-out pornographic games on their PC-FX platform.
"Does Microsoft really think they can compete with Sony, Nintendo, Sega, 3D0 and Atari with their upcoming 'Xbox'? Can they really elbow their way into this crowded market full of entrenched and experienced companies?"
By the time XBox was out, The only real players on the market were Sega, Sony, and Nintendo, and Sega was on it's last legs as a hardware maker. 3DO and Jaguar were already jokes and dental x-ray machine covers. Microsoft still hasn't make dime one on their gaming division, their existence in the market is due mostly to Microsoft's deep pockets.
Yeah, I think history says it can be done.
It can be done, but none of the moments of opportunity are here for Valve to make it the way you suggest. Steambox merely going to wind up a slightly better funded Ouya, a more fondly remembered than OnLive, and a money maker only for ebayers that will hoarde and sell it in 20 years.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Everything I've read so far is underestimating Valve imo. Keep in mind what they've done in the past, how they've been basically the single bastion of decent game programing left in the market now... how nearly every game they come out with changes the industry in one way or another. Valve IS innovation when it comes to gaming. If they were a publicly traded company I'd be all over their stock.
I doubt the steambox will be what we expect. None of Valves products ever are. They are releasing hardware requirements for free... the OS is free... do you really think this things a console? Is something so outdated their goal? I seriously doubt it. Within the next few years I expect to see T.V.s come with Steam per-installed. No console what-so-ever. You just pick up your Steam controller and viola, away you go. In the near term, you can get a set-top-box to upgrade your older TV or just install it on your PC. In the long term I expect to see Steam become the primary Media center on most TVs as it pushes out Microsofts offering as it's pricey.
This is going to be just like Android. Valve wants control of the market so they are giving the hardware manufacturers hardware specs, a free OS and promising to maintain it for them in return for access to your living room.
The 3,000-odd library of titles on Steam
In order to run on a Steam Machine without also hogging a Windows PC for the duration, a game has to be ported to desktop Linux. I was under the impression that less than 10 percent of the Steam library was ported to desktop Linux, though I'd appreciate links to sources that correct this.
I bought the PS2 and PS3 because at the time, they offered backward compatibility. To this day, I can run PS1 and PS2 stuff, awesome games like Crash Bandicoot and Maximo. With the PS4 they're telling me that the media library of titles I spent a *lot* of money on will not run on the new hardware. My reaction to that is simply to not buy a PS4. Instead, I bought a couple more used, working copies of the original (meaning, have those that have the PS2 hardware in 'em) PS3s to keep in a very low use state for the likely day when the one I'm using dies. I'm *really* tired of having to start all over again, and this time -- I'm just not gonna do it. The (considerable) up side is that PS3 titles and PS2 titles can be had for pennies, and I'll never run out of "new" games to try. And my favorite game of all time isn't a PS title anyway -- MechAssault -- so phhbbbbt.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The Steam Machine seems like yet another settop box that would allow you to remote into your gaming computer from your entertainment center.
This is where you missed the bigger point. The Steam machine can have different iterations and the most popular won't be just "streaming machines", the streaming option is there to answer to two things: "But I wanna play my windows games!" "Or I'd love to keep my battlestation PC in it's room, but occasionally game on the couch and I don't want to pay for two gaming pc's!"
The most promising is a self contained gaming system which will use Valve's optimized operating system - SteamOS (based on Linux) with new "AAA titles coming soon" and with the bonus of running any steam games you currently have that already have Linux ports (of the 3,000 games on Steam currently 300 are ported and the number is growing). As they have shown, PC gamers will get more bang out of their buck using their OS than Windows since the whole package will be optimized for gaming.
Now, don't compare it to your PC. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who owns a PS3/XBox360, doesn't own a gaming PC, and has $400 burning in their pockets for the next console release. What does a Steam Machine offer them?
* Cheaper games
* More launch titles (300 so far + the unannounced AAA titles)
* More precise FPS controller
* Ability to stream games from their gaming PC (if they have one)
* No monthly fee to play games online
* Ability to use any controller they want - system is open and PS3 and Xbox 360 controllers already work with it.
* Choice (and competition) of hardware providers
* Ability to mod into a full fledged PC (remember the Sony other OS debacle?)
* Upgradeable
* Easier game acquisition. Why run to the store to get your game? Fire up Steam, click on the game, click buy, tell it "yes" to install, enjoy!
* Game modding!
* More/better patches for their games
* More peripherals
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