Quoting: Halifax

Quoting: STiATYou don't see it .. that was never the plan. It was never the plan to establish steam machine as a competing platform.

Not even remotely correct. Valve made a huge push for Steam Machines early on. Valve showed up at GDC a few times with a very large SM presentation/pitch. Valve was even going so far as to give away free Steam Machines to users and developers to "make it the best it could be".

It became a sidelined plan when it didn't get received well at release. Honestly, a little before release.

Just because it is now a failed plan, or there are other plans still afoot (ex cross-plat) doesn't even remotely somehow retroactively negate that Steam Machines were 110% indeed, a very big and loud plan for a time.

EDIT: Note, I'm not saying your point about their push for cross-plat being also a selling point is wrong, just that such a point retroactively now means SM's were never the plan as a competing platform, you bet your a$$ Valve wanted them to be - it just failed to pan out.

Ye, but the whole push was not about steam machines. It was about the cross platform. The investment taken is not the purpose it serves. Pushing steam machines never had any real chance of success, and I'm pretty sure it is not the selling point they had at their partners, considering that they prepare for a 3-year cycle which is pretty common in game industry.

They have the right to prove me wrong, but I'm pretty (very) sure that steam machines were never the target, but cross-platform playing, which we probably could benefit from.

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And another thing: Locking out Steam and cross-play of a marketplace is almost impossible, at least if you want gamers.

If they do, it's the push valve needs for SteamOS. When others say "we don't allow steam", people will ask "what about the 200 games I have there? Why can't I use it"... They can wait for that attitude to time out, which will take ~3 years (not taking 5 years for a reason, statistically speaking several universities say prognoses for more than 3 years will always be false)... that's enough time for a new strategy by Valve, or to make a push into the market. And still then, SteamOS is ... nothing more than a playfield. They can push with their own android supporting steam, they can make deals with producers to pre-install - they have a lot of options.

If this happens, there is when SteamOS comes in, within a big investment of Valve which will cost them approx 1.5 billion in investments to technology and marketing, to push of a new platform.

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You don't see it .. that was never the plan. It was never the plan to establish steam machine as a competing platform. The plan is to establish Steam as the only cross platform platform, the only one supporting MacOS, Windows, Linux, Android, with cross-playing. SteamOS was just a push to get publishers and developers putting up their skills and trying cross-platform, getting engines up to cross platform, and then pushing Vulkan - of course.

That (cross-play) is the sole and only plan. It is the only thing Valve can offer as benefit over native marketplaces, since Google, Microsoft and Apple will never allow their direct competitors on their marketplace. And SteamOS is nothing more than a game-pit for that, "you can play it in Windows or Linux/SteamOS". That's not an offer, that's the test field for a broader strategy. With Vulkan at it's base, Vulkan is may more critical to Valve than SteamOS, since it enables cross platform playing, which is the only benefit Steam has over other competitors. And with Google stepping on there, it's most likely to be the cross-platform of Steam or if Google can lock-in enough customers.

They're planning this well, but I'm not yet sure they see their greatest problem. But I'll not state that one yet, since they have some time to cover this (1-3 years).

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I don't care, and nobody will. They stay committed. The issue they have are stores bundled with operating systems (iTunes, Google Play, Windows Marketplace).

They don't really care for gaming, I wonder what's in their shelve to counter those platforms. Can only be one thing: Buy at Steam, play it on every platform (iOS, Linux, Windows, OSX, Android...). The big issue is, you may buy a game on Android or iOS, or OSX; and are not able to play it in Windows or SteamOS. And I doubt Google, MS and Apple will ever get around doing a deal about this. And that's the strength of an "independent" platform, namely, Valves Steam. And I lay my hand in the fire that that's their business target and Linux just a playfield for this.

That can be the only thing Valve is pushing for, and getting games and publishers on early support on that platform is the only way to do that. How ever they will manage the technical difficulties between the platforms, that's probably what they try to tackle right now.

We need to understand that SteamOS is not about making us happy or Linux a strong platform. There is a business goal behind it, and the question we should ask is: What is valve cooking up? Not necessarily negative for us, but they're not doing this out of charity, that's for sure.

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On my wishlist ... if I had the time the next 6 month, I'd probably buy it...

It's really interesting. I always complained not being able to play games in Linux. Now I complain not having enough time to play all the games I want....

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Painless Linux-Support has two sides:
It's probably painless to support stuff if you're using the right libraries to get all the window management, input and stuff done.
What can be a pain, especially for graphically more... challanging products is still the graphics stack. Ye, a lot of is done there, but we're not quite where I'd consider it a good state.

Still, ye, Linux numbers is minimal, and I can understand business decisions on not supporting Linux. Though, it's always nice if we get a game :-).

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No problem. They are partnering with a publisher to get the game out in the quality they want. They could rally it and not release it in the state they want, or they partner with a publisher / investor.

This means the funds they raised won't last until 2017, so the publisher is taking the gap getting some return of investment and benefits, probably providing them with a advertise push too. For their finances, it's their business, not ours, ours is to hope for the game to be released in the best quality. And they seem to do that.

For the "beta for all backers", they told in their forums quite some time ago that they won't be able to hold this promise. Well, I didn't really care, I backed the game, but I want to wait for a final release - if I play the beta and later play the full game, it feels "used", and I like this "ohh, all new" thingy :D.

Even if they decide to delay a Linux release by a month or two I wouldn't really be stressed. What I care about is that they hold the promise of the port.

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If that's going to happen, my bet is that it's actually a Vulkan port of Glacier 2.

Why?
They support D3D12 in Glacier 2, and my bet goes that the port from D3D12 to Vulkan would have been easier than porting an engine like this to OpenGL.

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Rather interesting than the engines (UE4, Unity etc.) will be how fast the middleware creators jump that train. They're very commonly bought by 3rd party providers, and if they're DX11/OGL or what-so-ever... well, they'd have to port that first. And it's pretty often the case that middleware takes ages while engines already support new technology.

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Didn't change a thing.

But this time, first time ever (yey) I got the survey on Linux.

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