Hardware Steam Machines specs and prices: Which one is for you?

The real "Steam Machine" isn't the hardware, it's the Linux OS for games.
Every decent PC is a potential "Steam Machine" if this idea takes off.

 

Wait . . .
Xbox One: 27 Games
PS4: 28
Linux Games for Steam: 250+

I'm still trying to see the argument here. Many big publishers have said they will be releasing for Linux, so the rate of increase should be the same across all platforms, with Steam at a huge advantage already.

Add in streaming from your PC and who's the winner here? Unless you want console exclusives (a valid reason to want a console), I don't see why you wouldn't seriously consider a Steambox instead of upgrading to another console.

I'll add my bias and say that I've been PC exclusive for over ten years now excluding some casual gaming on Wii for a bit when it first came out.

 

TBH after reading a link that Pliqu3011 posted in the gaming section...

I'm not sure Steam machines are meant to set the world alight.
For those that CBA to read the article the TLDR version is : Valve are playing the long game as they think Microsoft is becoming an increasingly closed system.

 

..and how many of those have full controller support?

 

That's a bit like asking how many games have Oculus Rift support, well actual the Rift has tools for dev's afaik. Where as Valve hasn't even gotten around to publishing the dev tools for the controller. Also the controller can be setup to emulate a K+M so it would support all those games.

But hey lets keep criticising the machines, OS and a controller that is still being developed and in beta.

 

Cost will be its main failing.

Most of the builds that have been shown cost more than desktop pc would cost with similar hardware. $500 build that has been linked is slower than the new consoles.

If you want to try steam os make your own system and install steam os onto it sounds like a much more viable solution than buying one of them pre build boxes.

You would also have to be already invested into steam to take a intrest in this id imagine to begin with.

Steam games and controller support varies by developer, Id say 80% of steam games do not have controller support built into them. I own 324 steam games, of which 60 have some controller support 35 of them have native support. ( so a little over 10% )

And id guess I have a rather larger steam collection than many have. Origin actually has better controller support, I own 35 games on origin and 34 of them can be used with the xbox 360 controller.

So controller support is certainly room for improvement. Corky you have no idea how wrong you are for emulation. lets pick a random game from my own steam folder that does not have controller support by default.

Sins of a solar empire rebellion, Has about 50 keybind buttons on the keyboard, You can not even confingure them to another device.

Incrediable adventures of Van Helsing, Has 10 keybinds and should be able to be configured you would think, Well you can not do that either as it does not reconise the controller as a input device.

Hitman Absolution would be a example of a game that was built for a controller and it works pretty ok on a controller.

Theres also games that should work on a controller because of how they were designed in the first place the sad part is they dont, Mafia 2 and the orginal borderlands are 2 games with very poor controller support despite been console ports first and foremost.

 

Has anyone considered Valve may forget it altogether? The sequel may never meet the expectations of fans due to the hype surround it or changes in the studio's vision of the game (it has been 6 years and counting since HL2:EP2. Maybe they want to leave the legacy untainted.

But from an economical point of view now would be a good time to milk it.
Also it could be saved as an exclusive for the final release of SteamOS.

 

Even Valve have said the controller isn't meant to replace a K+M but to provide a better solution to playing from the couch than we currently have. A traditional controller (thumb sticks) uses a relative or velocity based input, the trackpads on the Steam controller uses a 1-1 based input method in the same way a mouse does.

In the final version they say the 4 center buttons will be replaced with a touch screen, so it can be configured to display any selection of keys, radial menus or anything else people care to design for their favorite game and publish on Steam for other people to use.

Yes its not going to be better than a K+M but that they aren't trying to reinvent the K+M, just give people a better way to play games from the couch than a traditional controller.

The best explanation of how the controller works (that imho is the real thing that will transform the way we game in the living room) is in the following video..

And FYI as explained in the video, the controller can be used in legacy mode to emulate a K+M so the game doesn't need controller support, any game that uses a K+M can be used with the controller (probably to varying degrees of success)

Valve have said they aren't going to do this as it goes against their ethos (apparently)

 

Apparently the Alienware Steambox isn't available until late 2014. Kind of odd... Maybe none of them are coming out until nearer next Christmas?

Typical Valve if that's the case.

 

Might as well just dual boot with Windows 8, no?

Anyway unfortunately Battlefield 4 is on Origin :O

 

And herein will lie the crux. PC gaming hardware is, by its very nature, quite expensive. This is what pushed people to the consoles in the first place, especially so when the consoles started to pretend to be PCs.

No matter how much Gabe butters it up he will never get around the issue that these boxes, if bought with even a modicum of power, are going to be very expensive. They're also going to be under powered, unless miracles start happening in Linux. I mean we've all heard that these blockbuster titles we play in Windows could be done with half of the graphical grunt, but personally I've yet to see it.

All I've seen so far is some one playing Portal with a controller. Whoopdee do. Portal is eons old. Any hardware needs at least some sort of killer app, unless of course he's planning HL3 on SteamOS and will not be releasing it for Windows.

 

And then found they payed more for their games and got worse patch support and no community created content. You pay your money you take your choices, neither PCs or consoles suit everyone's needs.

 

Will Linux support Community created content, As the content in the current steam community is surely for the windows version of the game. From what ive read the games need a rewrite of some discription to run under linux.

I know Sins developer ( Stardock / Ironclad games) was saying they needed to do a rewrite of there texture code to get it playable under Linux otherwise it just crashed all the time. They also confirmed no user mods would work under linux without going through a similar rewrite.

Fan made mods already take months to be made as they are total conversions in 90% of the cases so are they really gonna add another few months for a linux version.

Patch support for playstation has always been pretty good, Patch support on xbox depends on the developer. Pc games in general need 3-4patches to be playable.

Rome total war 2, Sim City, BF4 to name but 3 that were unplayable on launch. Bf4 to this day is so so, Sim city 6 patches later was fixed. Rome is still broken dependent on map / mode selection.

The X space games need about 100 patches to be playable. X3 is 100 times better game now than when it launched.

 

The Steam Workshop would work the same it does now, if the game is supported on your platform of choice (Windows, Mac, Linux) and the developer releases the tools needed to create content then people can start making and publishing hats, maps, weapons, addons or mods. You wont find someone earning $500,000 per year just from building items for other customers on a console.

 

But neither of those points you raise are being touted by Steam as a good reason to buy their hardware.

You don't need to tell me the pluses of PC gaming*, explain it to the millions of parents who will be asked to buy it by their kids. That's where success is made or lost. Making an underpowered PC for people who know how to build one (and more importantly install an OS on it) isn't going to sell the underpowered PC. It's just going to make the nerd say "Oh cool another OS to play with".

You're also forgetting about the many killer apps the consoles get (like GTAV and The Last Of Us).

* Wherever there are pluses there are serious negatives. I spent three days trying to make RAGE run smoothly on my rig, then just gave up and played it stuttering like a pig. I would imagine it's down to driver support for it being broken in a later driver, but whatever there was no fixing it.

At least on a console it's one set of unified hardware, not millions of different possible combinations of hardware.

 

Yea i don't think Valve has done a very good job when it comes to explaining why anyone would want to buy into the whole Steam machine, OS and controller, but i think that has more to do with us and the media viewing what they are doing through the eyes of being a console or Windows PC owner.

 

So far, to me at least, it just looks like a means to play Portal and old games, as well as lots of Indie titles. And this is fine, of course, but not fine to the tune of a thousand pounds.

Now if Valve started showing off Half Life 3, or Left 4 Dead 3, or any killer app? I'm sure people would want it a lot more.

As Rollo has touched on, large AAA titles will be the key to any success, and right now we're seeing nothing being touted, just a controller and some small form factor PCs.

What also confuses me is Mantle and HSA. Not that either confuse me as such, as I know what they both do, but more than AMD are trying their best to sort out gaming on Windows and make things far more direct to metal. Which goes against the grain of the Steam box, and IMO almost makes it competition for Steam OS.

I asked for a 7990 for my 40th Birthday for Mantle, not Steam OS. It all just feels a little contradictory to me. Too much going on in regards to PC gaming, with no single aim. Just lots of fragmented ideas to get rid of Direct X.

 

Fragmentation and windows is the way its been for a while. Look at Andriods fragmentation with users spread across 9 different versions of the OS.

Most Devs code to the lowest mark. At the min thats direct x 9 50-60% of all hardware acording to the last steam server. Direct x 10 only games are very rare, DX 11 does not really exist yet from that point of view.

Mantle will also struggle because of this, Its all well and good getting on the BF4 hype train ( BF4 is so far destroying the battlefield brand) But it will need the big AAA titles to also support it or it will be like physics another waste of space, Supported by AMD titles and little else. ( Not like AMD has the cash to throw around to get branding either, Niether does Nvidia ) Seen alot less AMD / Nvidia titles in the last year or so.

Microsoft Showed the way in paid exclusives for its xbox console, Theres nothing to say they could not force windows 9 upon people by giving devs cash to code only to it and nothing else.

Valve can not really do the exclusive game angle, One they could not really afford to do it as they would need 3-4million Steam OS users to make any exclusive financially viable. They would also risk alienating existing users of steam.

 

Its not about success.
That's what i mean when i said we maybe viewing it through the eyes of console and PC owners. we are so used to thinking in terms of units sold as a measurement of whether a console is a success or failure we seem to be automatically expect these Steam machines to follow the same metric.

The link that Pliqu3011 posted in the gaming section...

Does a better job than i ever could in explaining what Valve maybe hoping to achive with this whole Steam machine, OS and controller malarkey.

 

I think that this is the most likely reason. I hope against all odds that they are successful in this regard. Would we have the indie titles and huge variety of games we have no if not for the openness of the PC platform? I think the answer to that is no. If every game dev had to buy a dev kit from Microsoft or Apple, costing thousands of dollars, and then get approval from those vendors to include the game in their app ecosystem at a cost of X% per game sale plus signup fees, then I doubt we would have had success stories like Mojang and other indies.