I think that will be announcement 2 or 3. A proprietary hardware box to actually push adoption instead of just hoping people will migrate.
I'm sure the Steam code itself is proprietary (and subject to the typical usage restrictions) and not licensed for free distribution outside of Valve approved products. Nope. NVidia's st.reaming system is reportedly one of the announcements as is the "Steambox" general system specs. Valve will reportedly not go the proprietary route but instead provide an outline of recommended hardware specs. There's an article over on THG about it.
That would be nice but I can't see it happening, maybe an announcement for Source 2 but I still feel HL3 is far off
Probably just some Kinect-like controller from http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/
You know, I've been doing some thinking, the only reason why Valve is going this route is because they are unhappy with Microsoft creating their own Games for Windows which functions the same as Steam. I think Valve tried getting Steam integrated into Windows but Microsoft was already creating their own version. Microsoft created their own search engine as well, Bing, instead of incorporating Google into theirs. These were both bad decisions on Microsoft's part, now Steam and Google are making their own OS's and Microsoft is going to lose it's monopoly on Operating Systems. Before they only had to deal with Mac, now they have to deal with Android , Various Linux Systems, and probably more newer OS's in the future. If Valve appeals to developers to make more Linux software as the first platform, then Microsoft is going to be screwed. The appeal of free software and everything free that is included with Linux for consumers will take down the corporate giant known as Microsoft. If Microsoft wasn't so greedy and egotistical, they could of kept their monopoly going, because they tried to compete with Google and Valve, they ****ed themselves.
Valve are no Google and never will be and SteamOS will not be a threat to MS as a gaming system. The open source nature of it guarantees it doesn't have a chance, open source stuff rarely succeeds.
Not true, I am assuming that OpenGL is going to be used with Steam OS. OpenGL and Linux are better tools for developers, they rarely get used to their full potential because there are not enough consumers who use these in order validating development for them to turn into mass produced products for sales. While Linux is better suited for hardware, which is why it is the most common OS for devices that are not PC's, like phones, tablets, etc. OpenGL being used by more developers who are making their games first on Linux then porting them to other systems will show how inferior DirectX is. This all depends on how many consumers of Steam OS or Linux there are. As it is right now, most people still use Windows on PC; However, the majority of customers of videogames are consoles. Xbox is DirectX while PS4 is OpenGL. If most PC users end up switching to a Linux OS, this leaves just Xbox as the remaining population using DirectX, developers would obviously develop games in OpenGL because it would be the largest population of customers. Here is also a article about DirectX vs OpenGl http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX
Nothing has been shown that Linux is even as good as Windows never mind better. The reality and not the fantasy fanboys are pushing is that most won't switch to Linux though, not unless every developer drops DX and that just won't happen.
Well, that's what I said. Developers won't drop DX unless there are more OS's which use OpenGL. As it is right now, only Mac and Linux use OpenGL for PC. In the future, if more people buy OS's that use OpenGL. This is a possibility, you have to remember that tablets, and many other devices are becoming very popular and people may not even use a home PC anymore as most of these new devices have all the functions of a PC, and these devices all use OpenGL except products from Microsoft. There has never been any AAA game titles made with OpenGL from the ground up. I think PS4 will natively use OpenGL rather than the PS3 emulating it. We may see some AAA PS4 titles built from the ground up with OpenGL. There are many Linux users claiming Linux is better than Microsoft, they say their systems are faster, and even better optimized than Windows. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD6nqQrJx78 Linux also shares the same benefits as Mac, that most viruses are made for Windows so you have more protection using Linux than Windows.
There are quite a few OpenGL engines and some that also do both like U3 engine. Mac's are starting to see malware. Actually any OS that is highly popular is going to be vulnerable to exploits because it's almost like a bypass. Any code that can be exploited is just as easily infected as if you had a complex password to your mail account and someone bypassed it by hacking the server and seeing your password. Linux has been safe for users cause the usage rate is so low plus so many different distros however plenty of demonstrations have shown many, many weaknesses over the years...hence all the security patches you have to update. Benefit of open source is you can make it however you want and a community effort that each person could fix code if they want. The downside is it's rarely innovative, usually copying ideas from commercial investments and the community tends to be slow at providing certain features, some of it is just lack of commercial push, like Netflix and ITunes for example. Some things you just can't do too well on Linux unless your l33t. So some games may run faster but it could be due to not being able to use something like SM4.0 for example so they have to go about lighting in a different way. OpenGL engine tech demo's don't seem to run any faster on either platform from my experience, Windows doesn't seem to have much overhead to hurt games that I can tell. I think it's more of a DX vs OpenGl difference myself.
Those engine tech demos are still built with DirectX first in mind. You can't see the benefits of OpenGL until a engine is built ground up with OpenGL and optimized with hardware in mind. Remember, Microsoft has not been fully supporting OpenGL for quite sometime, Vista only used OpenGL as a layer ontop of Direct3D which made running OpenGL a performance loss. I don't even think there are hardware accelerated drivers with OpenGL for Windows. Read this article, Valve might actually be the first ones to spend the time to optimize their games with OpenGL. They claim there is almost 20% increase in performance. http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133824-valve-opengl-is-faster-than-directx-even-on-windows
First ones, let's hope they are not the last ones as well. Might be hard to break that DX cycle developers have which in turn prevents the gamers from migrating.
Since we don't know which versions of DX and OpenGL were used we have no way of knowing if it was a legitimate comparison, especially when they never released it for anyone to test. Since Valve have an agenda it's likely an old DX was used but a new OpenGL. Personally I think AMD/EA's Mantle is far more promising.
That might be true that the comparison might not be legit, I still remember Valve's first HL2 reveal which was mostly scripted events, it made the AI look more intelligent than it was. Overall, I feel if OpenGL becomes the standard in development, it would be better for the industry and newer OpenGL versions wouldn't bog down the industry. Microsoft keeps DirectX proprietary making it exclusive to their hardware. This limits development because most dev's like to make multi-platform games so they can make the most money. DX10 on Vista suffered because of this, Microsoft is calling the new version DirectX11 even tho it isn't much of a improvement from DX10 because they want developers to dis-associate all the bad things with DX10. Now that the consoles are using DX11 natively, we can expect Dev's to actual push the boundaries of the tech and hopefully see dramatic improvements to DX12 when that comes. One thing Valve is right about Microsoft is they are preventing innovation from happening because they want to limit OpenGL and any open source products from being popular. This allows Microsoft to continue making their money on whatever they own. Just look at how hard Steve Jobs had to work in order to get his version of the OS out.
The thing with doing a steam os is it will be s*t*r*e*a*m*lined for gaming.. No overhead like you have in windows. They also stated that you will be able to play anything in your library so they have some sort of deal with MS or another way to run what are mostly windows based games. I think it's a great idea.. We will be able to build our own custom consoles or buy one pre-built. The nice thing being that, bought or built, the hardware will be upgradable and we will be able to keep up with the best graphics products as we upgrade. No more waiting for the next gen console or having to put up with dumbed down graphics because of their life cycles. What will really get it off the ground is if they can come up with some good controler options.. I would imagine we will be able to use our pc stuff with it like the g27 and g940. I got my badge for beta testing completed and would love to be picked. It would be really sweet to be in on the start of it all and getting to test the first products. Fingers crossed..
http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamController/ Final part, steam controller. After 2 being steam machines with no controller, there wasn't much hope left for a game really. http://media.steampowered.com/steam/store/livingroom/controller/SteamController.jpg
I really think Valve has lost it. It's nice and all that they're trying something new, but this has no hope.
