Quoting: SethoxMy point here is that as long as you just deny an idea because you do not like it, you stagnate the community.

Of course! Everyone should support ideas because they don't like them! How could I have been so blind?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: melkemindIt reminds me of the original Torchlight port that came out of Humble Bundle years ago. Whenever you attached anything like a hat to the head of your character, the head would disappear.

My question to all you zombiephiles is: Does being headless make a zombie more or less scary?

Heh. Tough one. On one hand, zombies tend to transmit the disease-or-whatever by bite and are generally enthusiastic biters when it comes to their offense. A zombie that grapples you and then does nothing = less scary.
On the other, are we talking about the kind of zombie you can usually only kill by bashing in their head? Because I see a potential problem there.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I think what makes this article easy to misunderstand is that on one hand, the author says at first that this is not just a list of the AAA games, but a personal list; in comments he reinforces that, saying that he only listed the games he was interested in. But late in the article he draws conclusions more generally about the state of SteamOS gaming from the shortness of the list. For the rest of us, though, it's pretty damned hard to compare the author's personal list with the broader state of gaming. We don't know how much came through that he just wasn't interested in, we don't know how much was released not on SteamOS that he was interested in. That makes the article inconsistent; basically a personal list can't really support a general conclusion, especially if we don't have access to the inside of the person's skull.

When was Civilization: Beyond Earth released? I'd pretty surely rate that AAA.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Of course the numbers mean something. People are impressed by big numbers. You tell someone a console has well over 1000 games at launch, there is going to be a certain "Wow! Really?" factor there.
But it's still true that people want the big popular games, and the Steam Machine is woefully short of the biggest, top-selling titles. I don't personally care--I basically don't even play the genres those games are always in--but it's a brutal fact when it comes to selling boxes.
Mind you, the few indications I've had about how many Steam Machines are actually selling give me the impression that sales have been fairly, perhaps surprisingly, brisk. Another brutal fact is that Steam is a really, really huge sales channel. There are a lot of people on it buying things, and Valve don't have to spend big money to dangle those machines on the screen half the time when you log on.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I notice there's one criticism that keeps on cropping up, even in positive reviews by people looking at it from a console perspective:
No apps for Netflix and similar webby multimedia stuff. That's something well within Valve's power to fix, they should get on it.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestThis actually applies to Linux too for whenever you need proprietary drivers, sure it depends on distro, but I went through hell trying to install the latest proprietary nvidia drivers in Linux Mint, and still failed.

Generally agree with most of your post, but this--I have to figure the key word here is "latest". Installing the proprietary nvidia drivers on Linux Mint that Linux Mint has available to install is easier than snapping your fingers (I'm actually kind of crap at snapping my fingers, but clicking the mouse, that I can do). I can well believe that if you want to go bleeding edge, it gets a lot harder. This is not quite the same as with Windows, where just installing a driver for some things at all is apparently often a pain (I don't know for sure, haven't tried to install Windows in many a year).

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Civ V, Civ: Beyond Earth, a little Crypt of the Necrodancer.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

This is a little off topic, but I just noticed something interesting:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/11/psa-pre-thanksgiving-one-day-sale-drops-a-steam-machines-price-to-300/ [External Link]

So apparently the Syber Steam Machines are all doing a $200-off sale today?
If this kind of thing crops up a fair amount, the price-point arguments are going to need rethinking.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ricki42

Quoting: Duckeenie

Quoting: adolsonWindows as a gaming console OS is crap.

Windows is not for me but I hate to see completely unqualified and unsubstantiated statements like: Windows as a gaming OS is crap, when any impartial person would tell you Windows is streets ahead in this regard.

I think 'console' is the operative word in what adolson is saying. Windows is better for PC gaming, with better driver support and more games developed for the OS. But as a console OS for hassle-free comfy couch gaming in the living room, it's less than ideal. A lot of that is due to MS's limitations on how much third-parties are allowed to modify the system (afaik the xb1 runs a Windows kernel, but since it's made by MS, they can modify the OS to suit their needs). That is where Linux has the advantage, Valve can do whatever they want, and all updates running through one central application that Valve controls makes it a lot easier to have a console-like experience.

Now this makes sense to me. There's a selling point here somewhere. I'm not sure, for example, if an Alpha boots straight into Big Picture. I'm not sure if you ever need to do any configuring in Windows--I don't configure things in Windows very often, but recently when I was wiping Windows 10 off my new laptop I had to boot into it and go into weird advanced option things just to get it to let me into the friggin' BIOS--sorry, "UEFI"--so I could turn off moronic Secure Boot. It was a pain and a half, I had to do some googling and watching instruction videos just to figure out where it hid the bloody option. If I had to work with that on an ongoing basis I'd go nuts.
And there is going to be a tendency for Windows to slow down over time, accumulate spyware, need virus protection fiddling (which will also slow it down) . . . these things can be used as browsers too, after all, so they'll be heir to everything on the internet that blights and slows down a Windows box. Then when they get to a certain point they'll need to clean it out or get the power user they know to do it for them. I understand there are measures you can take to keep this kind of thing to a minimum, but couch gamers strike me as including a lot of the kind of people who don't understand those measures. It'll be a pain. Then there will doubtless be weird Windows update shenanigans.

Unfortunately, this is not a simple or obvious sell. These are troubles that pop up gradually, down the road, not right when you buy. It's not instant (lack of) gratification.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: CaldazarFor some reason people didn't quite listen to Gabe Newell when he stated what SteamOS was all about.
Did he claim better driver support? More Games? That DirectX 12 would suck over OpenGL 4?

No! What he claimed he will do is to end walled gardens. A machine and OS you own, meaning you won't get sued if you hack it to build a freaking robot with it. Hotz, anyone?

Unfortunately, that isn't a sales strategy or Gnu/Linux would rule the desktop.
And yes, I put the "Gnu" part in there to underline the point.

View this comment - View article - View full comments