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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.'"
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.'"
You don't want to ship early then fix when you're talking about the controller. You want that to be a steady target for developers, not just for big changes like whether you need analogue triggers, but for subtle qualitative ones like the throw of the triggers and buttons, and in this case pretty much everything about the repsonse of those touchpads. How much contact is needed to register a touch? What method do you use to smooth the capacitance data into coordinates? What's the sample rate? Developers will spend lots of time tuning the "feel" of their games to match those parameters, and if you change those a year later, suddenly their game is going to feel subtly wrong, (Anyone who has had to play a console game with a cheap thirdparty pad knows this pain.) The developer will have to live with it or go in and issue some sort of controller-version-specific patch.
Nope, with controllers, doing it right and late is more important than doing it almost right and early.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
That's because it's a hedge against Microsoft's attempts to subsume PC games into their own walled garden, locking out Steam. The conditions that would make a Steambox necessary are also the ones that would suddenly make it - and Linux in general - viable for thirdparty hardware and software manufacturers. If those conditions don't arise, Steambox will fail, but Valve won't need it anyway.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
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?
It seems the effort is losing Steam.
What do you mean, "option"? They're Linux PCs running Steam, they all natively support keyboards and mice.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Vaporware? Blowing hot air? Steaming mad? Still ironing out the wrinkles? Future looks hazy?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It'll still beat Half-Life 2 Ep3 to the market...
I don't expect there to be any new games in the Half-Life franchise anymore. They already tried making HL2EP3 but ditched the project. The leaked screenshots from their project tracker showed a Half-Life 3 stub with no development activity surrounding it. At that time their most efforts were clearly in creating the Source 2 engine (with massive development effort) and a new Left 4 Dead game to go with it. Meanwhile, time has passed and already a decade has elapsed since the initial release of Half-Life 2.
Of course Valve probably wants to keep the Half-Life hype going and dream alive as long as possible, to maximize people's interest in the company.
You know the answer to that question.
Others reading this discussion may not know the answer to that question. Please repeat the answer not for my benefit but for theirs.
Others reading this discussion may not know the answer to that question. Please repeat the answer not for my benefit but for theirs.
Okay.
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?
All of them. Well to be more specific as many as you can. Since it's controller-friendly you'd want to focus on the PS3/PS4/Vita/360/Xboxone/DS with less focus on the Wii/Wiiu. You could also support PC with the 360 controller.
Multi-platform is the way to go.
You are missing half the point of steamOS/steambox. One half is to make the 'PC' platform big-screent tv-living-room gaming friendly.
The other half, is that its Valves hedge against Microsoft destroying their entire business by altering windows.
Valve saw Metro, Microsoft accounts to sign in being the preferred default, and the Windows App Store. They saw Windows RT with complete and total lock down. They heard the rumours of Windows going subscription based, and cloud based.
Steambox/SteamOS is a hedge against Microsoft Windows becoming hostile to Steam.