Quoting: Mountain ManI seriously doubt Valve took it on themselves to advertise that Witcher 3 was coming to SteamOS,

Except that's exactly what they did -- in order to advertise Steam *Machines*, by way of making the Steam OS catalog appear more appealing than it actually is. At the time that 'SteamOS Sale' was meant to convey only one message, and that was that this new thing called a 'Steam Machine', was the kind of thing you could get, so you could play Arkham Knight or Witcher III on it.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: dubigrasuIndeed, SteamOS basically can be installed on whatever hardware a Debian Jessie can be installed.

So a Raspberry Pi too? :P

View this comment - View article - View full comments

openSUSE Tumbleweed is my favorite rolling distro.
*Way* more reliable than Arch in my experience; nothing arbitrarily breaks every two days.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Velocibox is a pretty fun game, though difficult.

Also, having played it on my laptop and desktop alike, I *think* the speed at which the box travels is tied to framerate -- so the better you're able to run the game, the more difficult it will get.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Mountain ManI don't think I've ever heard a Mac referred to as a "Mac PC".

Me neither. I think it's being confused with 'PowerPC'; which Macs used to use & advertise on their cases.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

"Oh my god, it's full of cubes!"

-- I'm already sold, haha.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: rick01457We all know that Amiga/Workbench is the real PC. Everything else is a pale imitation.

I beg to differ:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Madeanaccounttocomment

Quoting: wvstolzingSo they'll inject bugs into the Steam client, which will not only deter people from buying games on the Steam storefront, but also make the individual games they've bought over Steam perform worse?

No, I think what he is trying to say is that Windows will make several quiet changes over time, that are never documented, to the underlying Windows libraries that Steam has to link into for things.

Still, that would be sabotaging just the client. As long as they don't turn windows into a complete black box, Valve could work around such nuisances.

The biggest threat would be a ban on all non-M$-store binaries on windows; though that doesn't seem likely.

A really dirty trick M$ could play, though, would be to limit the use of DX12 only on UWP (or whatever it's called) applications. In that case, M$ wouldn't even have to bother sabotaging Valve; since Steam would thus be rendered irrelevant for new games, as long as those don't use Vulkan, of course.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Slowly, over the next five years, they will force-patch Windows 10 to make Steam progressively worse and more broken. They’ll never completely break it, but will continue to break it until, in five years, people are so fed up that Steam is buggy that the Windows Store seems like an ideal alternative.

So they'll inject bugs into the Steam client, which will not only deter people from buying games on the Steam storefront, but also make the individual games they've bought over Steam perform worse?

I think what he's trying (clumsily) to allude to is an iOS-style prohibition on non-store binaries altogether -- but that would be a huge move, much bigger than games, or Steam, or what have you. Mac users have been alarmed about this ever since Mountain Lion introduced the option to block out-of-store binaries in System Preferences. I don't know whether that's become the default option now (haven't used a Mac since 'Mavericks' ) but even Apple doesn't seem to be taking that extreme route in their desktop line.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: boltronics

Quoting: cprnit freaking annoys me when PR people misuse technical terms.

I blame Apple's old "I'm a Mac... and I'm a PC" television adverts. I'm sure they were just trying to call out Windows(tm) directly, but it sucks. Macs are a type of PC too.

Don't forget Microsoft's own run of ads around the time Windows 8 came out (soon after Apple discontinued their 'I'm a Mac...' ads), in which they were trying ardently to establish the notion that 'PC' is synonymous with 'anything that runs windows' (tablets and phones[haha] included).

View this comment - View article - View full comments