News Valve's Gabe Newell confirms the Steam Box project

this is the first time in my life i will call myself a fanboy!

 

Cool. Not that I would likely buy a premade one. I would rather build my own. Would be cool if they sold them as partial kits.

 

Take my money Valve... Just do it!! Just like you do when Christmas comes...

 

I think bigger plans are in action here.

Work has been done to allow steam on linux to log in as big picture mode, Its also been confirmed that Ubuntu TV will be coming to us in the "near future". A combination of the two could be a extremely attractive option for many.

I also believe valve recently "hired" some industrial designers to work on "peripherals", I seem to remember seeing the job advert too late for myself but screamed when I found out.


Also to note about the hardware, it's a single screen set-up operating at 1080p which is hardly taxing on any modern graphics card, coupled with the fact that the Linux base allows for system level updates "that work" on a weekly release could see better optimisation of drivers for games supported in Steam.

This null and voids a requirement for CPU and GPU upgrades which frankly is ridiculous. How many of us are still rocking Intel 775 Quads and X58 i7 perfectly fine, hell the 8800GT got re-branded so many times it got comical but it still performed extremely well because devs were coding for multi platform specs, ergo Xbox 360.

The hardware industry has been covering up bad drivers by convincing everybody needs a bigger stick to hammer the code with. Driver optimisation can improve performance beyond your wildest dreams. So by narrowing the target, performance can be increased. Currently Nvidia drivers are akin to a family saloon, its fast enough but not designed to be an F1 car, but if you use the same engine in a light vehicle you'll soon zip along.

So if Steam and Canonical were to release a TV like a giant Imac with laptop grade hardward or something akin to the HP Z1, which is upgradable and faptastic! I would be perfectly happy.

On a side note, cost is merely a function of demand, the HP Z1 is seriously expensive as the market yield is fairly low. Something marketed well over a platform like steam (insert banner ad hate here), then such a device will do extremely well.

Steam hasn't turned its back on the PC market, its merely looking to expand and that's something I would love to see.

I am personal sick of seeing nintendo re-hash the same sh*t they been throwing at us for the best part of 20 years, there is only so many Mario Kart's one can buy before thinking, its the same game new platform. And the same goes for Sony tbh.

Fanboy's kill all that is new and awesome, cough cough dreamcast. And the Wii only did so well because of overweight stay at home mum's, and the hipsters who like to "trend".

Something else worthy of noting, if Canonical are planning Ubuntu for Tablet's (which they've proved), then considering its the same OS and not a bastar*isation that is WinRT/8, does that not mean Steam will come to tablets...

 

are you implying they didn't actually hire these designers. They just rounded them up and forced them to start working at gun point or something?

 

They tried paying the designers, but Valves so awesome there working for the greater good.

 

Why do you think HL3 is taking so long. Rounding up people at random and trying to get them to write and code the game is akin to monkeys writing Shakespeare...

 

The Amp Hour interviewed one of them earlier this year. Obviously he didn't reveal anything about what he was working on, as he hadn't started the job yet (the linked podcast was out in April).

 

If they keep up their current pricing, it may well be an alternative to current consoles.
Console game prices has withheld me from buying a PS3 instead of a stand-alone blurayplayer.

(as for some reason PC-games are a lot cheaper than their console counterparts*)

*no, not for new releases maybe, but after half a year or so.

 

Even new releases...

Lego Lord of the Rings - PC: £17.99
Lego Lord of the Rings - Xbox 360: £25

Okay Lego games aren't exactly wildly popular games that sell out on release day or generate the same hype as the latest Halo, CODBLOPS/CODwhatever or Mass Effect 29 - and Lego LotR isn't available on Steam - but my point stands .

 

I actually had the Lego games in mind, as they run like a dog on PC and for some reason never get bugfixes so I'd like to buy them for Wii instead