Valve Software spreads word that its Steam Machines will be launched in 2014. As previously reported, the company has partnered with numerous other hardware manufacturers to licence the Steam Machine ... Valve Steam Machines due for arrival in 2014
....even ICT is going "strategic"..... meaning...... survival..... again... ....even ICT is going "strategic"..... meaning...... survival.....
Yeahhh...no. I don´t have a clue what he´s trying to say. I´m curious to know the prices of the hardware.
Used to enjoy being able to go into the likes of GAME, get what I wanted without having to peer at the small print to see if I was going to be blackmailed into using a Steam account. The last PC game I bought was UT3 because of all this nonsense. I'm not a console fanboy these days either, as I just use my PS3 to watch BluRay films. Was really good being able to just instal a game, and if I ever got tired of playing it, I could swap it with someone else who had a game which I rather fancied playing.
yeah BABA's a bit like the Matrix, i mean i dont even see BABA, all i see is 'blond, 'brunette' etc etc This 'fanboy' crap has got to go man. I like my console, portable and pc titles, but i dont like microsoft coz i think they're ****, Half-life is gay as **** with all it linearity as the next cod and you know it, and superman's the presidents bitch that wears his undies on the outside of spandex pants. and hell are you talking about BABA!
To me this is all about the Steam OS. How much improvement in performance can you get with Steam OS vs Windows, everything else is secondary to me. I think Steam OS needs in the order of 50% performance improvement over Windows in order to provide an incentive to run Steam OS with it's restrictions or to go to the trouble of dual boot. (I say this because I've only got one machine - my laptop!)
They could just simply shift most of the "Steam deals" over to the Linux side. Differences in the price of games alone would get many to switch.
Got my "Steam Hardware Beta Candidate" yesterday, however I didn't realise until now that I have a (super small) chance to "win" one of these steam machines heh...
As much performance as you can get with a well performing Linux distribution and the Steam client, Steam OS might be easier to install and get ready for gaming thou. I still don't get how they can s t r e a m (What's up with the G3D word filter?) DirectX exclusive titles to OGL without loosing anything at all, I mean, OpenGL 4.4 has all the features needed, it is fast too, but still.. Plus that there will be a lot titles that aren't on Steam and never will be there, how are people supposed to play these if not on Windows? The SteamBox itself is nothing else than a PC with limits in how much you can upgrade it, unless if the hardware pushers come out with mid/high tower alike boxes, but then the idea defeats itself anyway. The controller on the other hand has some cool ideas, but not as good as a mouse and keyboard when it comes to fps gaming at pro level, even Valve acknowledges that.
I assume it's like Splashtop for Ipad. I can play PC games from my Rig onto it. It just s t r e a m s the video and input to my ipad, the rig does the processing as usual. Not that a touchscreen is great for most games but for casual games it does actually work out pretty well. If there is lag and i'm sure there is, I don't notice it. Also I don't think most gamers on average games at pro level. They may buy the pro hardware despite it though but it's possible to be at least pretty darn good with such a pad. If I can use a console gamepad and hit within the top 3 spot a few times in MP matches on the PC then I'm sure people could get accustomed to the Steam pad to do better. Last time I used my 360 pad in BF3, I got almost 7k points and 2 headshots which was pretty darn good for me cause I'm not that great at it.
Not completely, since the conversion process is done on the machine itself. I guess easiest way to explain it is, that it is a program that translates DirectX instructions to OpenGL in real time. According to Valve it should be pretty fast, I yet have to see it with my own eyes thou, plus I wonder if it really takes everything from one API to the other. I won't get a SteamBox myself thou, but I will most probably test out the OS itself to see how it works. As for the gamepad, it is probably good for quite a few games, but FPS, RTS and MMO's where you use the mouse for high precision and/or fast reaction it won't cut, you will not have the same edge with it as equal skilled players that use a mouse.
