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Steam Controller Hands-on
Ars Technica has posted their impressions from a hands-on session with Valve's new Steam Controller. The controller notably departs from standard practice of relying on two thumbsticks for precise movement, instead replacing them with concave touchpads. From the article:
"When used as a kind of virtual trackball, as most games did with the right pad, it was a revelation. When used as a virtual d-pad, as it was on the left pad, it was an exercise in frustration. Let's focus on the right pad first. There's definitely a learning curve to using this side of the pad properly; years of muscle memory had me trying to use it like an analog stick (minus the stick) at first. It only really began to click when I started swiping my thumb over the pad, as I've seen in previous videos (there was no one on hand to really explain the controller to me, so I was left figuring it out on my own, just like a new Steam Machine owner). When I say it "started to click," I mean that literally. The subtle clicking in your hands as you swipe along the pad is an incredible tactile experience, as if there was an actual weighted ball inside the controller that's rolling in the direction you swipe. And like a trackball slowly losing its inertia, the clicking slows its pace after you lift your thumb off the pad, giving important contextual information for the momentum imparted by your swipe."
More write-ups are available about the controller from Gamespot, Gizmodo, and Joystiq.
Well, it's not like you're being steamrolled into accepting this as an input device. With an open platform, you should be free to use whatever input device you want.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
There are barely any games for it, ...
This is fantastically inaccurate. As it will play all the games already available for steam on linux (452 at current count) it in fact already has more games than the sum total of launch titles for ALL OTHER CONSOLES EVER. Troll harder, why don't you?
Is it 3D printed? Then it's the future and you're a Luddite for not seeing that.
And how many 3rd party titles were out before the launch of other consoles?
Many of them are shitty, that's true, but that list also contains some diamonds-in-the-rough. Some of the Indie game dev houses are unsung heroes and are actually breaking new ground but you just haven't heard of it because there weren't commercials on TV when it happened. Most of these games are also quite cheap, especially compared to the 50-60$ price fixing lock-in enforced by the Big Three console manufacturers. The Valve games stand the test of time too, and if you count them up on their own also outnumber either the Xbox One or the PS4's launch title count, albeit they weren't "new" at launch per-se.
A very subjective opinion.
With games like Psychonauts, Bastion, Wasteland, Fez, Frozen Synapse, Brütal Legend, Aquaria, FTL, Super Meat Boy, Stacking, Shank, To The Moon, Hotline Miami, and so many other brilliant games, there are a huge selection of quality launch titles for the Steam Box.
I'd easily take the Steam Box and its library over current console launch titles.
With so many corporations focused purely on next quarter profits, not thinking even six months ahead, I suppose it's normal for people to not understand the decade-long plans of Valve.
First off, they're only competing with the PS4/Xb1 by being a couch+TV focused system. They're a fully open system - you can build your own Steam Machine and slap the OS on it. But you'll have a hard time getting a quality machine for less than $500. That's one prong of their long game - erode the Windows tax, and just as importantly, make sure that if Microsoft suddenly fails or turns hostile to PC gaming, they have a way out. But stop thinking of it as "$500 console" (which is basically normal now), and more as a "$500 gaming PC", which is really damn cheap.
I know what you're about to say - "that's just semantics!". Well, yeah, it is, but it's also the truth. You're not getting a console with fixed hardware being sold below cost so they can make up for it in games or even with later hardware revisions, you're getting an upgradeable, user-accessible system.
Second, their "launch lineup" is arguably bigger than the Xb1's and PS4's combined. I just did a search on Steam for games with Linux and full controller support - got 58 results, from Metro: Last Light to Super Hexagon. Sure, they're almost all indie or older games, but you know what? I had more fun with Brutal Legend than I did with the last Call of Duty, so maybe that's a good thing. And that's ignoring the fact that a lot of these boxes also have Windows preinstalled as dual-boot, to get you the hundreds of games *that* supports (even with the "on Steam with full controller support" requirement, there's 292 games that meet the mark, including aforementioned latest CoD).
Third, game support is aimed at long-term growth, not a sudden burst at launch that fails to hold on. Remember how the PS3 was at launch? Decent set of launch games, I suppose, then nearly nothing for a few years. At times I felt like the Gamecube had better third-party support, although looking now the numbers don't back me up. They're not able (or perhaps just not willing) to bribe companies into developing for their hardware, so they basically have to convince them by showing that it's profitable.
Oh, and every SteamOS game intrinsically has Linux support. Remind me again, before Valve got involved how many developers were releasing Linux ports?
They've got the hardware guys rallying behind them because removing the Windows tax removes one of the bigger disadvantages from PC gaming. They've got the indie guys rallying behind them. You are correct in that the major third-parties have not yet committed to the platform, but I'm not sure your implied analysis that AAA games are necessary for a platform is correct. If this takes off, it will make new AAA developers from the indies. I wouldn't bet on that, but I'd also not bet against Valve's long game.
A solid 20 mins at the press event. I'm a big Valve fanboy, but this just didn't work for me. It didn't feel like a good gamepad replacement, nor a good keyboard/mouse replacement. Tries to replace both, masters neither.
Steam is a DRM-based platform, I cannot imagine any scenario where it resembles "open".
For one thing, the Steam DRM platform is designed to coexist with DRM-free games on the same machine. I could take a DRM-free game for Linux and install it on an Ubuntu PC that also has the Steam client installed or on a SteamOS PC. Console DRM, on the other hand, is specifically designed to reject anything DRM-free. For another, it's reportedly easier to get an indie game greenlit on Steam than it was on the seventh-generation consoles. Remember the issues that Robert Pelloni had with his RPG Bob's Game?
This is some seriously weak troll shit. Steam OS can run a huge swath of emulation too. From MAME to 2600 to Dreamcast and more. Also, In home-streaming is coming, which lets you play the entire catalog of your Win PC games on a SteamOS box.
Good-bye
You can use wired Xbox360 controllers directly.
Good-bye
You should be able to plug your Linux box into a TV using an HDMI port today.
Provided you already have a Linux box with a gaming GPU and a TV-friendly slim chassis, and you already have another computer to use at your desk. A lot of families currently own one PC, and it's in a separate room from the big TV in the living room. True, a SteamOS PC is just a mass-produced set-top gaming PC, but the fact that it's marketed as a set-top gaming PC means it's more likely to come with an appropriate GPU and chassis than your average Office Depot special.
Few people are going to want a SteamBox because it is Linux, they will want it for the "Steam DRM Service" otherwise they would just use Linux.
Unless you want to run both commercial games that use Steam and games that aren't (yet) greenlit on Steam without having to buy two machines. Before this push to get Steam on the television, one had to buy two devices to connect to the TV: a PC for the indie games and a console for the major-label games.
And I can plug my Windows box into my TV today using HDMI
Again, provided it's in the same room as your TV. See, for example, adolf's comment.
from my perspective you seem exciting about plugging a Linux box into a TV
We're excited about manufacturers bucking long-standing tradition and widespread mental sets and actually mass-producing and marketing a Linux gaming box designed for the TV to the general public at a price comparable to current-generation consoles.
If Steam were just a service where I could just buy games, I'd be all over it. Unfortunately, what Steam mostly is is DRM. It's obstructionware that insists on being present. I don't like having to wait for it to load, having to wait for it to retry and fail to find a network connection, and having to check "Offline" every single time I run something. I don't like it blowing my mods away, forcing me to do updates, and randomly unsorting and resetting my list of Skyrim mods if I don't save my edits fast enough. Steam DRM kills the Steambox for me, which is very sad because the Steambox is a Windows 8-killing PC in spite of Valve's efforts to try to steer perception away from that.
No, it's not the games that are killing steambox, it's the competition.
Steamboxes start at $500 and go on up - the initial list I saw, you can get ones that go to $1400+.
Well shit, you know what? Everyone who wants to buy one (i.e., not you and me, who can install SteamOS on their own PC) will head down to Best Buy and look at it. You can get a PS4. An Xbone. Or a Steambox. Best Buy will probably carry 4 or 5 of them, all with technical gobbledogook of nVidia this, Core i5 that, blah blah blah. And no, Best Buy will not carry one that costs more than $500 because people will just laugh and walk by it.
And so you have the consumer having to choose the "best" $500 box out of the 4 or 5 in front of them. What will make the choice for them? How it looks. Because they can't make the choice!
And never mind the whole "Good" "Better" "Ultimate" strategy - the only ones most consumers will see are "Good" because they're priced like the PS4 and Xbone.
And sure, maybe the first units will sell. But take it two years later, and "Good" no longer is adequate - they're going to see people with PS4s and Xbones playing games, while they're stuck with a new SteamBox purchase or run in "Crappy" mode.
End result - developers will bitch about PS4 and Xbone graphics holding them back, but also first-gen Steamboxes as well,if they want the platform to be viable because the consumer is not going to be buying a new one in a couple of years. And no, they're not going to spend $100 to put in a new video card either ($150 with Geek Squad!).
We saw it this time around - the PS3 and Xbox 360 holding PC graphics back. The Steambox is an obvious attempt to revitalizing PC gaming (most AAA titles are ported from consoles, and if you're lucky, they release same day) as well as giving developers freedom to use high end graphics again.
And nevermind when instead of Tier 3 PC manufacturers (i.e., OEM assemblers) you have Tier 1 (they make it all - they design their own motherboards, etc) integrating all but the video card on a single board, removing excess parts, and selling what was a $500 SteamBox for $400. Or slapping it all together so its not swappable on a single board for $350.
The steambox is trying to put choice into consoles, which is the whole reason consoles exist - you go to the store, you buy it, you play it for many years and they're all the same. When you have now a dozen manufacturers with a dozen different models, and probably a half dozen more cheaper ones coming out, suddenly it doesn't look so easy for the consumer anymore.
Not sure if emotionally stunted whiny cunt or troll...
Never heard of any of them. Are you sure they're as famous as you think they are?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
None of them warrant a $599 SteamBox purchase to play them. Most of them are laptop (with integrated graphics) material. Now if someone brought out a SteamBox in Ouya price range (at least for starters), it would make sense.
Consider how Nintendo solved the problem of arm fatigue.
But they didn't. It still happens.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"