The low-end Alienware box has specs that don't meet the minimum requirements for Batman Arkham Knight, one of the few AAA titles coming out this year that supports SteamOS. And it costs more than either the Xbox One or Playstation 4, both of which will run Arkham Knight fine. I think Steam Machines are a failure waiting to happen. PC enthusiasts can get a Steam Link for $50 for most of the benefits of this. And people who aren't PC enthusiasts have no reason to buy these over a console.
The existing Alienware Alpha (which is basically what the SteamOS box is) benches about the same as an Nvidia GTX 750Ti, which outpowers both the XBox One and the PS4. It should have no problem matching or exceeding either console's performance, just like the existing Alpha.
The debut price is about the same as the PS4/XBone, but doesn't include the monthly fee for multiplayer, and if you look at the long-term total cost of ownership it's cheaper than a console, especially when you consider that in the future you can upgrade to new hardware without rebuying your games, which consoles cannot guarantee.
> The existing Alienware Alpha (which is basically what the SteamOS box is) benches about the same as an Nvidia GTX 750Ti, which outpowers both the XBox One and the PS4. It should have no problem matching or exceeding either console's performance, just like the existing Alpha.
Except that it runs on Linux, which has less performing drivers than on Windows, and Linux ports are usually far less optimized than their Windows counterparts as well (which is not hard to understand since most games are made with DX in mind).
Steam Machines don't compete with Windows, they're complementary to existing Windows machines (game streaming); they directly compete with Xbox/PS4.
Most Steam Machines are Nvidia based, which makes sense, they have the best drivers, and they're generally 1:1 as performant as their windows drivers. I have a GTX970 in my Ubuntu machine and it rocks, supports my gsync monitor and everything; trumping console performance is pretty much a no-brainer with modern nvidia maxwell stuff...
> Steam Machines don't compete with Windows, they're complementary to existing Windows machines (game streaming); they directly compete with Xbox/PS4.
I hope you are joking, because branding-wise the Steam Machines are a clear mess and completely confusing for people who don't know how to read PC specs. Hell, you have Steam Machines planned with only Intel HD graphics and also called "Steam Machines" just like the Alienware Alpha and the Syber ones, while power-wise they fall in totally different categories. That's the best way to kill your brand, at least 3DO never did that kind of mistake.
> they're generally 1:1 as performant as their windows drivers.
No, this is clearly false. I don't know where you get this impression, check almost every benchmark out therefore for Borderlands 2, CS:GO, Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite and almost every other AAA game out there, you will see that the Linux performance is clearly behind. I'm a Linux gamer as well but at least I don't pretend we are at the same level as Windows, because that's a clear lie at this point.
> trumping console performance is pretty much a no-brainer with modern nvidia maxwell stuff...
It should be, but many ports on Linux are far from being optimized (some rely on OpenGL 3.x to maintain compatibility with AMD while it's clearly less efficient than OpenGL 4.x calls) while console ports are much more likely to be tested thoroughly on a single hardware based and optimized for it.
> Hell, you have Steam Machines planned with only Intel HD graphics and also called "Steam Machines" just like the Alienware Alpha and the Syber ones, while power-wise they fall in totally different categories. That's the best way to kill your brand, at least 3DO never did that kind of mistake.
Replace "Steam Machines" with "Andriod" and you could make the exact same arguments. And the thing is people have, and they have been to an extent completely correct. But, I don't think you would say Android hasn't been a very successful bet for Google, despite the fragmentation and huge range of quality for different mobile devices, and the problems with branding they have. What I'm seeing is Valve trying to make the exact same play in the console world, where Microsoft and Sony have it locked down very much the same way Apple did (or was on the way to doing) with the smartphones. They want to break people out of those walled gardens and bring them into their ecosystem, and they're going to provide an open platform for any hardware maker to do it, just like Android did.
Of course mobile phones and consoles are two different industries, it might play out in a similar way or it might play out completely differently. But I think it's a bit premature to write it off as ridiculous or even a bad idea from the start when there is precedent for this sort of strategy working in other industries. It certainly has a chance of playing out well for Valve, branding and fragmentation be damned, as long as it opens up a much larger audience to Steam.
And every time I've looked at that list, Intel integrated graphics have been fairly prominent.
Some of the arguments against the steam machines make me feel like I've fallen into some weird "console vs pc" propaganda war, rather than a factual discussion about business strategies.
I get the Android comparison, but I don't think it is very much relevant. People don't always get Android phones by choice, and they get a phone ANYWAY because they need a phone.
For consoles, the choice is already very clear out there and the well known brands are Xbox, Nintendo and Sony, period. You can see how nVidia is struggling to establish their Shield brand in the market by the way, as a good indication of how hard it is to enter the market. There is nobody who "needs" Steam Machines out there right now, because they already either have a console, a PC or both if they actually care.
And additionally, Valve is too risk-averse to actually build and sell hardware by themselves (or even take a NEXUS approach like Google), which makes me think they don't even believe in the Steam Machines themselves. We will see.
Actually there are a few people (like myself, my brother and a bunch of our friends) who are waiting to see what the steam machines will be like. We're still using xbox360, wii, laptops etc to game on. Now looking to upgrade sometime this year... we've been waiting for steam machines... but the specs are way too confusing.
I just about understand nvidia cards and the numbering system, but how they interact with i5/i7 and different memory?
(cue 1,000 geeks who will try and educate me)
I just want to buy a box that is better than XBoxOne at the same price. At this rate I think a used XBoxOne off ebay is a better option. Let steam machines bake for a year or so.
The worst thing that can happen for steam machines is when 99 people buy the budget version and 1 person buys the dream machine, the 99 people see the dream machine beat their budget machines and now you've got 99 disappointed customers and 1 happy customer.
This doesn't happen with playstation, wiiU or xbox. Steam machines are going to fail and I'm pretty gutted about that.
Honestly why don't they have an easy to understand rating system? Specs do nothing for me, having been out of the PC gaming market for ages since I swapped to Mac. I do have a basic understanding of the CPUs and GPUs but when you combine X with Y and throw in W, what do I have?
Give me a solid number so I can compare machines quickly. How much Steam does my SteamMachine have?
Because this year's "Steam grade 1" will be next year's "Steam grade three".
Even if you include a date - "Steam 2016 grade 1" you're going to need some kind of comparison table to work out if your game ("runs on 'steam 2017 grade 3'") will work on your machine or not.
Oh, I don't know. They could just take some aggregate standard benchmark, and coerce it down to an integer. Have higher numbers be strictly better. Sure, you might get box makers trying to game it, but it would still be better than "here's some specs, you figure it out".
After a recent review of low-end (well, compared to an i7) AMD apus paired with high-end gpus[1], I'm not even sure most "professionals" can get anything meaningful out of specs alone. Sure an i7 with ddr4 is "better" than a dual-core AMD APU -- but if your target is 1080p gaming, it might not be much of a difference -- given the same GPU.
So it shouldn't be that hard make the statement "runs on Steambox rated 24 or higher" be true for all generations of steamboxes. Even when that'll have to be changed from 24 to 24000.
> I just want to buy a box that is better than XBoxOne at the same price. At this rate I think a used XBoxOne off ebay is a better option. Let steam machines bake for a year or so.
Honestly the XboxOne has more value, right now, than the Steam Machines in terms of how well games will run on it. But you can say that the Steam Machines may have more games (but not as many that you can play with a joypad - since some PC games require a keyboard anyway). It's not a straightforward comparison, and it depends a lot on what games you want to play in the end. If you want AAA games, right now it looks like the Xbox one is a better option, but maybe that will change later in 2016. Who knows...
> now you've got 99 disappointed customers and 1 happy customer.
Which is precisely why they should have setup minimum specs for their Steam Machines, or at least have a Valve Steam Machine that sets the standard. But Valve did not do that, and I am also concerned they will fail precisely because of that.
>But you can say that the Steam Machines may have more games (but not as many that you can play with a joypad - since some PC games require a keyboard anyway).
Apparently the steam controller is designed to be a suitable replacement for a keyboard/mouse, and will include a system for sharing controller mappings for games over steam.
> Apparently the steam controller is designed to be a suitable replacement for a keyboard/mouse, and will include a system for sharing controller mappings for games over steam.
I have tried the Steam controller (the beta version from a while ago) and it is certainly not as easy to use at they make it look like. It certainly takes a while to get used to it.
It's understandable that it will take a while to get used to (it's a fairly new interface/form factor combination for an input device), a Valve employee on Reddit has confirmed that the steam controller use in the launch video was live action[1] and that the programmer who designed the keyboard interface can type faster than him on a standard keyboard using it.[2]
So it might require practise, but according to this anecdotal evidence, it has the potential (if your dedicated enough) to form a suitable replacement.
> I hope you are joking, because branding-wise the Steam Machines are a clear mess and completely confusing for people who don't know how to read PC specs.
The entire point of Steam Machines is not to deal with this, just buy the cheapest Alienware, done. If you care about that sort of thing, you buy a different one.
> check almost every benchmark out therefore for Borderlands 2, CS:GO, Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite and almost every other AAA game out there.
Doesn't matter. I have an Alienware Alpha and I can get 60 fps on every one of these games in SteamOS, as least as good as the modern consoles, Windows performance it depends; some are better, some are not; all TVs and projectors are 60hz, so unless someone is coming out with 144hz gsync TVs, then it's more than fine.
Sure, we get boned by games like Dying Light, but that's just software, totally fixable.
> t should be, but many ports on Linux are far from being optimized
You could make that argument about any crossplatform game.
The entire point of Steam Machines is not to deal with this, just buy the cheapest Alienware, done.
Except that obviously won't work. In the console world I really don't have to deal with this. I buy a PS4 at launch and I can play every PS4 game that comes out from now until they stop making PS4 games. That is obviously not with Steam Machines. Will the cheapest Steam Machine play every SteamOS game that comes out in 2 years time without problem? If the answer is 'no' then it is something that I have to be aware of and deal with.
The other option is that Valve steps in and says that if you want your game to be SteamOS certified it must be optimized to run well on the slowest Steam Machine we've ever released, but I wonder if they're willing to that. Can you imagine telling game developers in 2017 that they must make their games work fine on 2015 era Intel graphics cards?
>Can you imagine telling game developers in 2017 that they must make their games work fine on 2015 era Intel graphics cards?
This is totally fine for loads of indie games already. And If you replace 2015 with 2013, of course you could do this. PC technology has slowed down a lot compared to 10 years ago, and it's not the constant upgrading it used to be.
Sure it's fine for loads of games, but unless it's fine for all games you're going to have to produce an N tiered system of steam machines (maybe class them on an A-E scale, and developers write something like "must have a C or better steam machine) and and the consumer is going to have to deal with system specs just like they do today (and just like they don't have to with consoles).
This HAS to happen otherwise Steam Machines are useless. Sure, in a few years Steam Machine Two will come out, then games can target that if they want.
On the other side of the coin they WILL stop making PS4 games, just like all consoles when they reach EOL. Yet you can play new games on a steam machine in decades to come.
You can play 2017 games on lower graphics quality (the same quality you get in 2015 games now) just like the consoles. Even if the games they get on the PS4 in 2017 are new, they are bound to remain the same quality in graphics.
you can play new games on a steam machine in decades to come.
Decades? Decade, maybe. But then again they where still releasing PS2 games a decade after the PS2 came out and they'll almost certainly be releasing PS3 and Xbox360 games a decade after those consoles came out too.
No doubt that there will be lots of games coming out in both 2017 and 2020 that will run just fine on a 2015 steam machine, but unless it is ever single game they release for SteamOS, then we're right back to the classic PC gaming problem and you've lost the only real competitive advantage that consoles have.
> Yet you can play new games on a steam machine in decades to come.
Where? Good luck playing something on a 2014 Steam Machine in 2024. If there is still one game 10 years later working on such a configuration that will be a miracle. PC gaming moves very fast, that's the point of PC gaming usually : you upgrade often.
> that's the point of PC gaming usually : you upgrade often.
No. That hasn't been the case for years, now. I built a machine in 2010, and gave it its first upgrade a couple of months ago.
And to tell the truth, I could've gone on a couple years more before I really needed to upgrade. The biggest bottleneck was the GPU (an nVidia GTX 460). However, I splurged on a few upgrades (GTX 960, up to 16GB of RAM (from 8), and an SSD). It's once again a beast, even with the same CPU from 2010 (AMD Phenom II X6 1090T).
And that extra money that I've put into this system? I've made most of it back in the way of cheaper games.
> The entire point of Steam Machines is not to deal with this, just buy the cheapest Alienware, done. If you care about that sort of thing, you buy a different one.
Yeah, and then complain that the newest games in 2016 don't run well on your hardware, while you thought it was just like a console! What a surprise!
> I can get 60 fps on every one of these games in SteamOS
Put in ultra details, with anti aliasing maxed up, and I'll be very surprised if you still get steady 60 fps, in all honesty. And oh, it's been benchmarked that anti-aliasing makes the performance go down significantly, I'll get numbers for you if you don't believe me.
> Sure, we get boned by games like Dying Light, but that's just software, totally fixable.
Yeah, except that it has taken them 3 months to fix to an acceptable level. Please explain that to consumers buying it on Day 1. Oh, and remember, they are "console gamers" since you said so, so I hope you enjoy the fun communication with people who don't care about specs or optimization or drivers.
> You could make that argument about any crossplatform game.
Yes, except that the requirements for Linux ports are usually higher than for Windows. Source: Steam requirements. Again, please go explain that to console gamers.
Custom built high end PCs have problems getting 60fps at ultra with maxxed AA in some games. Literally nobody is expecting such performance from these machines.
I do not know for steam os, but I am using ubuntu since many years and I do not tweak much my system. Each time I encounter a crash, a couple of days latter, there is a fix that is automatically installed (apt-get update, upgrade).
I imagine that steamOS can update drivers transparently to have always best configuration for gaming. The support team will only need to answer clients when a fix will arrive automatically.
NVIDIA is really pushing though, they are moving up in the Linux developer commit charts [0]. In a few months they might be close enough to parity on the SteamOS (which likely could involve some proprietary code) for it not to matter.
Does not matter, people who buy "consoles" don't care what is native or not. They just care if their game runs well.
And additionally, Witcher 2 is not really using a wrapper, at least not in the WINE sense of the word. Witcher 2 uses eON which basically does conversion of DirectX calls to OpenGL calls at compile time, not execution time. So it's arguably pretty close to native.
> I have a GTX970 in my Ubuntu machine and it rocks, supports my gsync monitor and everything; trumping console performance is pretty much a no-brainer with modern nvidia maxwell stuff
Yeah, when your graphics cards costs mores than the entire console (Groupon has a deal right now for a $304 Xbox One without Kinect, and the cheapest GTX970 on PCPartpicker is a Zotac at $310.95), that tends to happen.
> Steam Machines don't compete with Windows, they're complementary to existing Windows machines (game streaming)
Sure they do. If anything, they compete against Windows much more than they do against consoles. There are reasons to own both a console and gaming PC. There's no reason to have a Windows gaming PC and a Steam Machine. Windows is a superset of a Steam Machine's gaming capabilities. The main reason for people owning a gaming console along with a gaming PC are the exclusive games, people will buy an entire Xbone for Halo or Destiny. There are no Steam Machine or Linux exclusive games.
That's a clear exception. Even CS:GO from Valve runs slower than the Windows version. All other recent benchmarks keep showing Windows ahead in FPS for the same games running on Linux. And hey, I'm a Linux gamer (almost exclusively these days), and for me this is not a problem, but it's just a fact.
And who cares about benchmarks for games on DirectX 9? Especially since the OpenGL port was made nearly 7 years after the DirectX version was released, and it's possible Valve could have made all sorts of optimizations based on advances in the meantime (either in their understanding of rendering or being able to take advantage of features that are in the newest versions of OpenGL but weren't around in a DirectX 9).
Do you mean that discussing the performance of Linux games is an unfair moving of the goalposts, or that it's odd that Linux caught on enough that we're now discussing the performance of Linux games rather than just their existence?
I think there is still a problem of "not enough developers supporting Linux" - that issue is not completely gone yet, while it has massively improved. The next step is having a stronger adoption from devs + first-citizen kind of performance. But I agree with your sentiment, the improvement has been massive in the past 2 years.
Well ... with the incoming low level apis support on linux should be easier. You need only disk access, network sockets, sound and audio system to make a game. First two are solved problems multiplaform-wise. Remove the drivers from the equations and there is no good reason why porting should take a lot of work.
There are many tools used for Game development that are platform specific and have no Linux version. That's also why some porting efforts are stalled currently.
> The existing Alienware Alpha (which is basically what the SteamOS box is) benches about the same as an Nvidia GTX 750Ti, which outpowers both the XBox One and the PS4. It should have no problem matching or exceeding either console's performance, just like the existing Alpha.
It's a lot easier to optimize for the Xbox One or the PS4 than it is PC games, because there's only two hardware targets for console games, and so you don't have to code around drivers or corner cases that only affect some users, you can optimize to your heart's content and everyone has hardware identical to what you're testing on. Being more powerful than an Xbox One or PS4 is not the same as being able to run the same games well.
Cost of ownership is a more complicated question than you posit here -- you have to buy new hardware more often, and if you're taking advantage of the in-home streaming feature to fill the massive AAA gap these things have, it's almost impossible to recapture the cost of TWO gaming PCs compared to the cost of one Xbox/PS by saving money on games.
You can't really compare hardware specifications between a PC and a console to get an idea of relative performance. Developers are able to squeeze a lot more performance from consoles as they aren't running a full OS and other things in the background. They are much more consistent so you don't need to leave as much leeway.
At least that used to be the case. Perhaps the modern generation of consoles are so complex that they can be compared to PCs.
The Raspberry Pi will run Windows 10. I don't know that "running Windows 10" is a meaningful indicator of anything in this context. It's certainly not running the same sort of Windows 10 that desktop and laptop PCs are running -- Windows Universal apps will be able to run on it, but traditional Win32 apps (like any Windows game on Steam) won't run on the Xbox One.
It seems like the big gripe with consoles is that there's a performance ceiling and the supposed benefit of a PC is that there simply is no ceiling. The game can look as rad as you want to pay for.
But consoles have something that PCs don't-- a floor. If a kiddo buys any piece content for their xbox or whatever, the darn thing will run guaranteed and be pretty OK.
The same definitely not true for new a piece of content on a PC.
PC's might not have a performance ceiling but they probably need a baseline floor. MAYBE these Steam Machines can help rectify it for down/middle market.
That's all true. If that was the only factor I might stick with consoles -- however, PCs have something else: A much more diverse collection of games. I'm interested in Steam machines largely because I would like to play PC games in a more Xbox-like way.
The fact that it will result in more games running on Linux is also a plus (for me).
There's your problem right there. "No true gamer" would ever take Alienware seriously as there is a massive brand markup. You are paying for the logo on the box. The stuff in the box is obsolete when it hits the shelves. Look at practically any other brand if you want to see competent pricing.
Alienware are good business machines (as they do have unmatched post-sales support). They aren't gaming machines, not even at a basic competency level.
It's a big pity that Valve partnered with these extortionists, it's no good for the platform.
I don't think Valve will be crying themselves to sleep if you buy a $50 dollar streaming box and a $50 dollar controller, and then continue to buy games on their service, instead of spending an extra $300 dollars (which will mostly go to the people producing the hardware) to get a system that's less reliant on your internal wifi.
Either way it's a beachhead for them in the living room, and as computing devices become smaller, and cheaper over time, (and Linux game support increases) they're better and better positioned.
I'm kind of adjacent to the demographic for this thing. I don't have a high-end gaming PC, but I have Steam installed on my Mac laptop (Mac and Linux support are basically the same in Steam) for mostly indie/classic/old games. Notably, you can't stream Steam games from the Mac currently (though I don't think there's a fundamental technical reason for that, edit: hmm, the info page seems to suggest I can stream games if I update to Yosemite).
If I didn't already have a Wii U for living room gaming, I'd probably buy one of these boxes. I might still, depending on how useful the hardware is for other purposes.
The Rift demands a pretty hefty graphics card, and most of these don't have one. Alienware is shipping laptop GPUs in their Steam Machines, and Oculus is particular about how the GPU is connected to the output port:
I have to mostly agree.. I think we're still 2-years from a hardware generation at a cost where generic hardware can support Steam OS (and top-tier games) at a decent price point for 1080p output.
I think that Steam Link with their controller is a pretty compelling option though. I also think that the nVidia Shield tablet was also an interesting approach... I'm hoping that the first generation of this hardware doesn't bomb too much... The mid-range systems should have enough oomph to come out over current gen consoles, one niggle is that I'd rather see hybrid or straight SSD drives when you're coming to that level of cost.
I also feel like Valve has missed the boat by having no video functionality on this. Consoles and regular PCs have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Instant, HBO Go, Plex... I don't expect them to have all that at launch, but Netflix has shown that they will go pretty much everywhere. Not getting Netflix on board means that they aren't even trying.
EDIT: And no optical drives in the Alienware machines as far as I can tell, so no using it as a Blu-ray player either.
Valve mentioned in the past they would be bringing Video and Music with "partners" and indeed they are very late on this, unless they have a surprise announcement later down the road.
Maybe a better approach would be to have a 'Steam Certified' badge on traditional PCs instead? Otherwise this vaguely reminds me of an improved version of 3DO's business strategy.
I haven't seen Valve advance a reason for these to exist outside of their worry at having to compete with Microsoft on their own platform. Which as a reason is completely besides the point for the consumer, which I think is why we have these confusing machines that combine the worst aspects of PC and console gaming.
As the prices of hardware falls, the share you're paying to Microsoft increases. Look at the history of MPEG2 licences and DVD players, what was a reasonable cost of doing business when DVD players cost $1000 became unreasonable when they are only selling for $10.
The value Windows offers decreases too as it become more and more reasonable to buy a PC for nothing more than gaming, whereas before you'd need a bunch of uses to justify the cost. Would Windows make sense on the streaming box for example?
There would be more of a reason for these machines to exist if there were more apps on Steam besides games. Maybe Valve can do more deals like the one they have with blender?
Yes that's my point. They need more normal apps so that people don't need to leave Steam OS to do productive stuff. They need to be more aggressive in getting them i.e. they won't take a cut of sales
Well there are a few key differences with Valve vs 3DO.
1. Valve is already profitable.
2. I do not believe that they are charging Steam Box manufacturers a licensing fee unlike 3DO so that may help.
3. Reading the article, it looks like some Alienware models are able to dual boot as a Windows PC? If so, that helps justify the price. A $750 PC isn't expensive vs a $750 video game console.
2. They are not, indeed, but the other problem is that manufacturers need to make money on the hardware, making Steam Machines more expensive that consoles anyway (and more than self-built PCs as well).
3. Yes, and not just Alienware. But honestly, if you are going to put it under your TV, I have a hard time imagining people using it as a PC on their TV screen. Monitors are better in that regard, and you usually want to be closer to the screen for regular PC use.
> PC enthusiasts can get a Steam Link for $50 for most of the benefits of this.
What are the benefits of SteamOS? 1080p is less resolution than a good PC monitor has.. not to mention most graphics cards can straight up use HDMI anyway.
In-home streaming. Lots of gaming PCs are too big and loud to have in the living room, so you can put them in another room and play games on your TV. But the $50 Steam Link does that,you don't need a Steam Machine for it.
Yes, but with in-home streaming you are going to get some slight delay to transmit frames, and while it may be acceptable for some games, it may not be prefered for others where fast reflexes/inputs/screen feedback are needed.
Sorry but gigabytes network simply bring more pixels at once, it does nothing to remove the latency. It's bandwidth, not speed-related. You still get latency. Whether you notice it or not is a totally different issue.
Your wireless game controller probably contributes more to latency than your in home network. Your television almost certainly does.
That said, latency is additive since it all happens in serial, and if the sum of it hits a certain threshold ("human perception") you begin to notice. So maybe you save a few ms from the network with wired vs wireless, or a few ms with a fancy "gamer" controller, or a few ms with a nice gpu-powered video encoding algorithm.
Shave enough of these things (which are only now being designed with this sort of over-engineered latency in mind), and eventually playing over the network is less latency-prone than playing directly on a machine from not that long ago.
Not quite true. Latency is also lower on a gigabit network; it doesn't send more packets in parallel, it sends packets faster, in serial. At any given speed, it takes time for some number of bytes to traverse the wire.
Though the minimum on-wire latency at 100MBit is 0.12ms for 1500-byte packets, per packet, typically 1GBit cards also have lower latency internally.
(You can multiply that 0.12ms number by the number of intervening switches, plus one.)
That depends on the environment - I'm using In-Home streaming extensively on my setup (Living room gaming PC via 802.11ac -> Gigabit network to OS X) and it results in about 25ms of total lag (encode + transmit + decode). Interestingly enough, most lag is added by the video decoder on OS X not the network itself. Meaning, I'm getting about 3-4ms of encoder lag, 2-3ms of network lag and about 18-20ms of decoder lag according to Steam diagnostics.
Strategy, RPG and other mouse controlled games are certanly more than playable in such a setup. Didn't try online FPSes though.
As an aside, playing around with the Oculus Rift was a good experience in different UIs for different use cases. In a tradition PC game the UI elements are around the edge of the screen, so they don't get in the way of the main view.
With the Rift, this simply does not work, as you can't really see the edges unless you strain - UI elements need to be near the centre of view. Skyrim controls worked well here, being a centralised HUD that you pop up when you need it.
Sounds like a DailyWTF error message. That being said, I don't think the goal is to get AAA PC games into the living room. I think it is to get greenlight games into the living room.
Because the PC-in-a-box (like the Alpha) is in a much nicer form-factor for being put next to the TV. Probably much quieter too. This is why I almost bought one the other day.
This might be an easy and cheap option (I'm assuming you can dual boot these with Windows) to have a PC to go with an Oculus Rift.
I'm a Mac user and don't really want to buy or build a gaming rig just for VR. This is an interesting option that seems to meet the Oculus recommended specs.
Syber's "Steam Machine X" is the only one which meets (or rather, exceeds) the Oculus Rift recommended specs. The critical component is the GPU, and Oculus recommends a GTX 970. This one has a 980.
At $1419 it's quite fairly priced for the components it includes (just check logicalincrements.com), but I wouldn't really call that cheap.
yeah that's pretty pricy. I didn't look very closely at the prices. The low end ones are basically laptops!
I still wish there was a generic off-the-shelf computer that everyone agreed was best for VR. I'm not a gamer and don't have the time or interest to build something just for Oculus. I'd be willing to pay a little bit extra to have the comfort of knowing other people will be troubleshooting the same problems I'm having on the same hardware.
They look like they only take half-height cards - apparently they do sell half-height 970s but you'll have a better selection of cards with a larger case.
It's a bit early to say whether these are compatible with the Oculus Rift, but it's a near certainty that they will be compatible with the HTC Vive, given Valve's involvement there.
Easy, maybe. Cheap, no. You're paying for the brand, the flashy case and parts that fit a smaller form factor (the Alienware machines are using laptop GPUs instead of desktop ones, I am not sure they would support Oculus at all). Cheaper just to assemble it or buy a gaming PC that isn't constrained to the HTPC form-factor.
Strange that nobody else mentioned this before, but I'm really glad that the Steam machines are getting away from those big ugly gaming towers and look more console like. This was one of the main reasons I am (or was) a console player, because PCs waste a lot of space and look ugly as hell. I'm usually not that sensitive to the look of my devices, but a PC tower is just extraordinarily ugly. I'm curious what others think about this.
This is a non factor in my decision making. I want to play games on the most advanced/compelling platform. If the device is ugly, it doesn't matter to me because there are many ways I can hide it or disguise it.
With the new Steam Link option, we can have the best of both worlds. Bulky powerhouses in an upstairs office and a shiny little box connected to each TV.
I really wish there were standard models so game developers could optimize the settings. These are just low-end PCs that manage to cost more than a PS4 or an Xbox One.
So I'm not even going to sugar coat this. How well can I use the steam controller for my N64 emulator? I'm having trouble getting a good D and C-pad as well as analogue stick on the normal playstation type USB controllors and am looking for something else.
I bought the GC/XB360/PS connector and the SNES connector, and it's been a blast playing games with them! For the SNES games I even got two controllers so I can play Bust-a-Move and whatnot with friends.
OK, I put down for the pre-order of the Steam controller. And am now remembering what a bad idea it is to be an early adopter. No offense to Valve but I'll be very surprised if they can succeed in a way -- and at a lower price point -- that much more experienced controller-makers have not been able to after decades of iteration. I just hope it's more compatible with my Mac than a jury-rigged XBOX360 controller is.
> that much more experienced controller-makers have not been able to after decades of iteration
Decades of iteration and yet the Xbox 360/PS4 controller is pretty much the same as the original DualShock PlayStation controller from 18 years ago. "Experienced" controller-makers aren't doing shit to improve existing gamepads, they just go with the idea that gamepads are a done job. I don't know if Valve's controller will suceeded, but at least they are trying something.
If your having a problem with buyers remorse. You can claim a refund until it's despatched, steam recently implemented a new refund policy (http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds).
From the store page of the controller;
>If you preorder a hardware product, Valve will charge the amount corresponding to your preorder immediately without waiting until the shipping date. You will receive a full refund if you cancel your order at any point before the shipping date.
I really think this could be a huge game changer for the gaming industry.
It might take a while to pick up, but I don't see why it would not work.
The problem of drivers will easily solve itself. If valve can negociate will AMD or nVidia, I don't see why drivers would not improve. It might take time, and at first it might not be a frank success, but I'm pretty confident that PC enthusiasts are already a good target, and I'm sure many PC gamers will buy it so there's no reason it's dead in the water. There are many good markers. If I was into the stock market I might try to invest in this.
Steam already holds a pretty big market share, so to me they got enough steam (pun intended) to negociate and tuck their way in.
The only issue is that they're not mainstream, they might lack advertising and they might not have a chance to be success with kids and teens. But the hardcore gamer community is pretty big already, so why not ? I'm sure developers will love it, and it might even allow so many more indies to make a buck.
It's ironic that this effort is trying to get gamers to buy Steam Machines when gamers already have machines far more powerful than the ones launched. Valve will have a big problem if they want to convince traditional console gamers. Which are the benefits for them if the cost is bigger? It seems TCO is good on Steam Machines on the long run but that's a tough argument for people that want instant gratification.
Steam Link seems the way to go for most HN readers, I guess, and that is the device I would buy if I had to choose. BTW, a question on this: I've read somewhere that although NVIDIA Shield works only with NVIDIA GPUs, the Steam Link will work also with AMD GPUs. Valve doesn't confirm this but says that it supports OS X, Linux and Windows PCs. Any ideas? Doesn't it run on NVIDIA's GameStream, like NV Shield does?
Steam Link uses Steam In-Home Streaming, which is a different technology than nVidia's GameStream. Steam Streaming will even use the CPU for video encoding/decoding, so it isn't necessarily dependent on your GPU. Though, for best performance you will of course want hardware encoding. I do not know which GPU's Steam supports hardware encoding on. A quick Google and browse through Steam's FAQ on this topic indicates that they at least support nVidia GPUs and Intel GPUs for hardware encoding; no mention of AMD. But again, Steam will happily use your CPU to do the work if it has to.
I was hoping to see some updated information on the HTC Re Vive, though I'm not seeing it on the page, especially since it's expected to release sometime in November. However, I am significantly more worried about the performance problems that may exist with the Vive, particularly with its twin high-resolution displays. My 970 already has a hard enough time pushing new games at 60 fps on High or Ultra, I can't imagine it pushing twice the pixels without seeing significant performance problems...
Things are pretty bad on the proprietary front, in the sense that they can't even be installed on a modern kernel at the moment (Fedora 21 has too new of a kernel to use AMD proprietary drivers, for example, and I haven't even tried with Fedora 22).
But, the Open Source drivers for AMD is actually seemingly in a better state than the nVidia Open Source drivers. According to benchmarks I've seen they perform at a little better than half the speed of the proprietary drivers. For me, this means I can actually play 3D games like Rust at 1080P with reasonable, but not impressive, frame rates on my R290 card running under Linux, without having to install the proprietary drivers. That's a surprising and pleasant state of affairs. Admittedly, the R290 is ridiculously huge and I should be able to do more than barely play games at 1080P at a decent frame rate. But, it may be the first time getting a 3D game running was as easy as "install OS, install Steam, install game, start game, play".
Also, I love that games are being ported to Linux at the fastest pace in history because of Steam machines. I play and buy a lot more games because of it.
I was obviously referring to proprietary drivers, because anyone serious about gaming with AMD (at least for recent games, older ones can run fine on FOSS ones) will have to use proprietary ones. Note that Mesa is still limited to 3.3 OpenGL support and FOSS drivers do not go over that limitation yet either (hence there are less and less modern games using OpenGL 4.x that will run on FOSS drivers).
Is there any reason why NVIDIA/AMD wouldn't want to go the open source route with their drivers? Is there some kind of a special sauce in there that they need to treasure? Aren't they in the business of selling hardware, or is there something really special about those drivers?
For once, OpenGL/DirectX drivers contain a shader compiler since the compiled form of shader in these APIs is in IL bytecode and it has to be compiled into the actual ISA code to be able to run on the processors inside the GPU. Such a compiler is pretty complex piece of software and even if it did not have licensed code opening it would expose you to all kinds of patent trolls.
Also, the DirectX drivers (and likely OpenGl as well) contain special code paths for many games/apps to improve performance. When they are telling you to download the latest drivers for your new PC game it's not because the new drivers fixed bugs and the game won't run (though it's also the case sometimes), it's because the new drivers have an optimized code path for that game. Developing these code paths costs money and giving them away for free may save money for the competition since the hardware is pretty similar and most of these optimizations are selecting the best hardware representation for an API entity.
Yes, there is. Like nVidia making sure that you don't know that the chip they use is actually the same as in a more expensive card, but controlled to act as a lower performance chip through the drivers.
Well, that's sad. So they basically have every incentive for there not to exist decent Linux drivers until the demand is large enough that they have to do a great job at supporting the platform?
I mean, as long as they make decent proprietary Linux drivers (which is what they are doing right now), I would not complain too much. They have been catching up in terms of features as well (compared to Windows drivers), so they are very active compared to the sleeping engineers from AMD (who like making announcements but do very little visible work, which renders their credibility close to zero).
> Also, I love that games are being ported to Linux at the fastest pace in history because of Steam machines. I play and buy a lot more games because of it.
Certainly, but if Steam Machines fail to pick up steam (hehe) that could be a very short lived phenomenon. Especially for AAA games.
The infrastructure for it has been built, too, which makes a big difference. As I understand it, making any Valve Source Engine game available on Linux is now relatively trivial. Likewise, OpenGL got a big boost from Valve committing to developing for Linux. So, many games that weren't explicitly developed for Linux have had reasonable ports made available, and it's cost game makers less than ever before to do so.
I was ecstatic to see Civ V available for Linux, for example, since Civ (and other Sid Meier games) has never had a Linux port in the past.
As I said, I buy a lot more games than I used to...but only games with Linux versions. I chose Rust over Day Z, for example, when choosing a survival game to buy and play. Will there be enough people who make the same sorts of decisions to continue to make it profitable for makers to keep making Linux versions? I dunno, but I hope so.
I think the open source drivers for AMD are better because the binary ones are terrible. Whereas in nVidia-land the official drivers are very good, you install them and they work, so fewer people are motivated to work on the open-source drivers.
Has anyone used the new controller and compared it to the original that came with the first steamboxes? I had a friend win the steambox lottery and I tried the original steam controller -- I found it simply awful.
If nothing else, I hope they follow the Steam controller's lead of putting the secondary triggers on the rear of the grips rather than trying to shove a second set of trigger buttons up on the shoulders. This has been a literal pain point with mainstream controllers for years, which I have never been able to hold comfortably while maintaining a finger on each of the four trigger buttons.
I've never played a game which required both triggers on the same side to be simultaneously pressed - they're designed to be used with a finger on the primary trigger which can be moved to the secondary one when needed.
That's because the game adapted themselves to the controllers. Moving that pesky secondary trigger will open up new possibilities, and games will likely take advantage of that.
The controller is one of the few things I would buy from Valve( I'm assuming it works stand-alone on a PC )[edit]. Unfortunately I can't even consider buying their games or operating system due to the built-in DRM and/or forcing Steam usage.
[edit]:It requires "Big Picture Mode", which in turn requires Steam to be installed. Sigh...
Steam ain't that bad. It's better than buying titles for consoles. DRM is usually forced on you by 3rd parties, as far as I know Valve titles don't ship with DRM, but you do need to use Steam to take delivery of the game.
It's a small price to pay, and a huge convenience.
Steam in itself is DRM. You can't run games without it. There are very few exceptions where you can. You must be online to use it, unless you manually specify offline mode( you must be online to do this ).
Steam may have DRM but they implement DRM properly.
That's the difference. Most companies who implement and force DRM on their games don't do it right, and causes issues for the end user, and makes their gaming experience rather shit.
Steam makes it easy to search for games, to download them, and to play them. The Steam platform is easy, fast and it just works.
It's the same reason Netflix took off - they take out all the hassle, and give you a great experience. I don't hear people complaining that they can't watch Netflix ... without Netflix.
It doesn't matter how is it implemented and what is your definition of properly.
You need to access their servers to play the game. This introduces problems or privacy, security and the right to play the bought game in the future.
You last sentence is a nonsensical. Of course you don't hear people complain they can't watch Netflix without Netflix. But they do complain you can't watch Netflix. Notice the difference?
Sorry, Netflix is not available in your country yet.
> It doesn't matter how is it implemented and what is your definition of properly.
> You need to access their servers to play the game. This introduces problems or privacy, security and the right to play the bought game in the future.
In return games on Steam are available for a huge discount.
I have exchanged some of my rights in return for a highly discounted price. I don't mind that because it was a willing trade that I chose to be a part of.
New games on Steam have roughly the same price that on any other platform, saying that they have a high discount is simply not true. Older games might have a discount, but that is also true for any other platform, all of them have occasional discounts. So Steam is comparable in pricing to any other platform.
What is shocking here is your willingness to give up your privacy for a marginal discount.
> You need to access their servers to play the game.
You can just turn on Offline Mode and play your games just fine. I hear your concerns with DRM but Steam is hardly a good example of the horrors it can cause.
Please note that you must connect to the Steam Network and test each of the games you would like to use in Offline Mode at least once to set up your account and configure Offline Mode on your machine.
You don't have to access Steam's servers to play - there's a thing called "offline mode"[1]
Steam does not have region locks. If they did, people still wouldn't complain about the original point of DRM etc the people who have access to Netflix, don't complain about their DRM.
Steam does have region lock capability. Check steamdb.info for game based info, but basically they either lock the game to the region or lock gifting to the region for games with region locking.
That's entirely up to the developer, they're not required to use Steam's DRM, and in fact many games will run happily without Steam running once downloaded.
Just in case you didn't know it already, there is https://www.humblebundle.com/ . It's a shop with a lot of drm-free titles and let's you download the games over http(s).
humble indie bundle sell a lot of steam keys lately. Lately being last couple of years. Only at the very beginning did they actually care about DRM (or Linux support).
GOG are the only people who do it right.
> Steam in itself is DRM. You can't run games without it.
Not at all true. The publisher/developer have to implement the DRM. I could put the folder for Bastion into my dropbox and share the game with you right now. You wouldn't need Steam to play it.
> You must be online to use it, unless you manually specify offline mode( you must be online to do this ).
This hasn't been the case for a few years. Offline mode now works without having to specify it beforehand.
I like the fact that if I get a new machine or have multiple machines, I can install/manage the same game everywhere.
Installing over the internet via digital download is not going to go away, and until someone comes up with a decentralized DRM scheme, centralized DRM is here to stay.
Why does it have to be a choice between "awful DRM" and "more awful DRM". Why not "no DRM"? GOG has proven over the years that it's a viable business model.
Not sure. We have an early version of one where I work (game dev), and to my knowledge it requires the steam DLL, and doesn't expose XInput/DirectInput bindings (I wasn't the one who added support for it, so this could be a lie, and it could have changed by now).
I wouldn't be surprised if it was similar to Wacom tablets. Wacom tablets out of the box you get a generic pointing device (a mouse input). If you want the touch/tilt sensitivity you need to install their drivers. This was on Linux years ago, so my memory could be wrong or things might have changed. It actually makes it a bit confusing because you can't tell if you're getting a pointing device or a pressure sensitive output easily.
That controller really better be awesome because the thing is two years behind the PS/Xbox and will arrive two months after Apple's new TV makes it's bid for console killing.
The Shield is Android rather than SteamOS. It has an integrated ARM+GPU Tegra X1 SoC rather than separate CPU and GPU. They are both competing with consoles though.
Pre-orders without an eventual delivery are fraud. Ignoring the time value of money, when you pre-order you typically pay the same amount as you would if you waited until the product was available. What you gain is getting the product earlier than others, and what you lose is the access to reviews prior to making your purchase decision.
Pre-orders are not a new business model. They pre-date the general availability of the internet.
What new business models? You could pre-order new car models for decades, a company would announce that new model X is going to be available in 6 months, but you could order one now to make sure you get it on the release day. In such case, you also didn't have the luxury of reading any reviews but you were buying an unreleased product.
You get the ability to make all of your friends jealous because you have the hot new X a month or so before they can buy it.
It's much more likely you have an overhyped dud a year late but one month before anybody else can buy it. If the game you're playing is to one-up your friends, it's a price worth paying.
It's not "their" hardware. They don't design any of it (Steam Machines) and the controller and Steam Link are simple enough to make that I don't think they can be that much of a failure.
Most of the games you buy for the PC these days are console ports anyways; they were literally designed to be used with controllers, they just slapped on a keyboard-and-mouse control scheme at the end (or after the original game shipped, in many cases.)
And, since it's just a specialized PC, you can just plug a keyboard and mouse in instead. Really, they just copied Microsoft's XBox playbook, with the modification that they're less blatantly lying about the fact that modern consoles are just more expensively designed and worse performing PCs with game controllers.
