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Valve's Steam Machines Delayed, Won't Be Coming In 2014
sfcrazy (1542989) writes "Valve has announced that its Steam Machines won't be available in the market anytime in 2014. The company delayed the release due to ongoing work on the Steam Controller. Valve's Eric Hope explains on Steam Forums why the work on controller is causing the delay: 'We're now using wireless prototype controllers to conduct live playtests, with everyone from industry professionals to die-hard gamers to casual gamers. It's generating a ton of useful feedback, and it means we'll be able to make the controller a lot better. Of course, it's also keeping us pretty busy making all those improvements. Realistically, we're now looking at a release window of 2015, not 2014.'"
'Nuff said.
Known as "development hell".
You always get feedback and always think of ways to improve your product, but you don't let that delay the release. You launch a 1st-generation, slighlty-flawed product, and spend all that development effort and feedback on the Steam Box II, which will bring in the fence-sitters, and which you get to re-sell as an upgrade to the early adopters anyway. The first-generation Roku box was pretty crappy compared to the new ones, but it actually got the Roku concept to market.
This news makes me very skeptical that the SteamBox will actually happen, and not just sit at Valve being a hacker project. Hacker projects always end up in development hell without some business person to yank the product out of the hackers' hands and put it to market.
Someone do something witty with that will ya? It's too early for me.
Sigh, maybe 2015.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It'll still beat Half-Life 2 Ep3 to the market...
The rumour mill suggests that some games like Civ5, Rome 2:TW and XCOM are waiting on the steambox being released so theyre seen as "release" titles. If this pushes back long enough, hopefully the games will come out anyway.
Controllers are hard to get right. This ain't the eighties where you just slapped some buttons on a box and put it in the players' hands. And they want to make a controller whose basic idea is completely daft anyway, because it totally screws up position feedback.
What's really wanted is a game console where all controls can be remapped on all titles. Let's see a console maker have the balls to implement such a feature. THAT would be a revolution in control, not a stupid zero-travel joystick.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If Steam wants to sell devices they should sell an HDMI stick (like a Chromecast) and pack in a controller. Sell it for $80 or so. People could use it to play games streamed over their network, or through the cloud. If they end up selling a PC running a Linux dist with a crappy selection of ported games and costing hundreds of dollars it will not sell as well since it will be competing directly against two consoles and even other PCs which enjoy a full selection of games, not just a handful.
Thank God for Valve. The gaming industry would be terrible if they weren't around. Any other company would have just pushed this out the door and made their quick buck... hell, no other company would have even tried to make an open gaming platform. If Valve ever offers an IPO I'll be first in line. They're one of the few tech companies out there that are actually doing something I'd consider of value.
Who wants last-gen games for a Linux console that nobody is really supporting?
Valve's ONLY motivation isn't the goodness of their hearts to the Linux community, it's to stop Microsoft from eating their lunch with the storefront. And right now, Steam works great on Windows 8.1 but MS is also making improvements (albeit small ones) to their store. It will be a long while before I give up Steam.
But the threat is real to Valve, and they want us to undertake all the heavy lifting, all the change, so that only 30% of our library now works instead of 100% on Windows. Thanks, but I'll stay with Windows. The Steam Box holds zero purpose for me since they introduced in home streaming. I can just stream a game to a small HTPC in my living room, or onto my tablet and have it powered by my main rig. But again... MS has technology like RemoteFX that can do the same thing... just a matter of time before it's implemented.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Valve needs to put out their controller and that's pretty much it. Most Steam users who want to use a PC in the living room are going to build their own rigs. Alienware even mentioned that there's not a heck of a lot in it for them (http://www.gamespot.com/articles/alienware-s-steam-machine-will-be-their-least-profitable-system-ever/1100-6419770/). The whole issue doesn't feel that important.
Valve é
Half-life 3 confirmed.
Seriously, how about a USB keyboard and mouse option? It sure would get the thing to market a whole lot faster.
given that after 7 years they have yet to release a conclusion to the cliffhanger ending of Ep. 2 for one of the biggest games ever developed is it any surprise that they won't be releasing SteamBox on time? I've long since stopped caring about Ep. 3 and I won't hold my breath for SteamBox. Even if it is released, will Valve ensure a steady supply of content for it?
Please oh please oh PLEASE don't let this become another Phantom console!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Release the boxes without controllers this year then release a deluxe edition with controllers next year. I have a keyboard, mouse, and a gamepad all of which speak USB just fine. Mark up the controllers and sell them separately, too, if they are so much better.
The problem is that, unlike with Android, no one seems particularly interested in their platform--neither hardware manufacturers nor 3rd party developers.
Say a video game developer that is a home-based family business is working on a controller-friendly game. For which platform should it develop this game? Has Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony made the developer approval and game approval process more straightforward than Steam Greenlight?
The problem is that one of the core principals of the console is that it has specific hardware to design for.
Another is that a console's monitor is more likely than that of a PC to be big enough to fit four people around.
I heard they're waiting for their release title to be completed first: Duke Nukem Forever 2.
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
Let Gabe rake in the cash on Steam, but spin off a Games division that only has to worry about...making games. Then we'd already have Portal 3 & Half Life 3 instead of holding our breaths Forever.
with Valve time, they mean they might release it in 50 years!
a controller driver, or a layer between the game and the controller API permitting remapping without the developer having to support it is not a hardware issue, but a software one.
To minimize complexity, a lot of console game platforms statically link the controller drivers. The remapping would likewise have to be statically linked.
Even Valve and see it'll be a turd unless they take it seriously and focus on making an actual console and make their games exclusive to it.
But then again PC gaming isn't exactly thriving and it certainly isn't profitable given that most of its users are over entitled little pirates.
Value, Steam, um, look, your controller is a great idea and maybe it's for the masses who think the using controllers is the way to go, but I am not one of them. In fact, I'm a PC gamer of many decades. I don't want a fucking controller from you, I want the steam box. Most the games I'm going to play will require a keyboard & mouse for best use. I'm cool with that.
But trying to make the one controller to rule them all is going to fuck you in the ass.
If your hardware (Steam Box) is finished, then I suggest you just bundle a normal controller with it, and start selling them. The "real" controller you can introduce next year when ever you decide you made it right.
Be seeing you...
if you want a commentary on an issue to which you know the solution then provide the solution. How about you provide useful information yourself instead
Because I know what the consensus about best practices used to be, not what the consensus has changed to. During 2012 and 2013, console makers revised their developer qualifications to better compete with other markets such as Apple's App Store and Google Play Store.
The Steam Machine was just a shot across the bow at Microsoft. The Windows 8 Store threatened to squeeze Valve out of the software sales market. Gabe Newel's Ex-Microsoft and he knows as well as anybody how they operate.
When Win8 flopped harder than a beached whale and the Store flopped harder still they almost immediately laid off the engineers they hired to build the darn thing. These days it's mostly just a curiosity.
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I would more think of a pack-in (get one code unlocking it and a few other games on steam when you purchase a SteamBox)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
What is the risk in waiting another year for this technology to be developed and released?
If they rush it, the best thing we can hope for is something equivalent (plus or minus) to the current controller technology. Honestly, we don't need another Dual Shock or Xbox controller -- the ones we have are great, and there is relatively little improvement to make upon them. They also already work with Steam, nearly flawlessly.
Let Valve take their time and get this right. They might actually start something new, and possibly even innovative, in this rehashed, mundane world of cookie cutter consoles.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
I admitted that I know CronoCloud's opinion. I don't know others' opinions. A lot of people accuse me of being disingenuous, but that relies on tacit assumptions that the opinions I've already seen are the only opinions in existence.