Quoting: mitcoesSteam Machines are not for PC gamers it is a product for console players.

The great deal is "play as well and as cheap as PC players console and PC games"

And with 400 USD, a console price, you can use a xx50 nvidia card or a xx60 and compete with XBOX and PS.

But is this Christmas (and not the 2015's) when 1050 and 1060 are available.

And Vulkan games will be available with next gen GPU, and then is when SMs can shine.

I hope Steam is waiting for Vulkan games to make other Steam Machine approach and sell even if they are Nvidia ARM SoC Machines CHEAP and good enough consoles to casual players and PRICE matters as the Wii or the Chromebooks show.

Last but not least, having cheap nvidia ARM SoCs based consoles with GNU/Linux and vulkan games (new and conversions) running fast enough on them can be the next good move.

Except now you need to port to ARM GNU/Linux as well, and have two builds for ARM and x86, and have to deal with the incompatible x86 games. (I note Nvidia's microarchitecture is VERY Transmeta-like, so once they can get an x86 license, it'll be easy to add x86 support.)

If you went the ARM route, Nvidia was pushing Android pretty well; but they abandoned the Shields when the Switch was revealed.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

More points I might not have fully addressed:

1. Community - Valve is very interested in outsourcing tasks to the community, with things like Greenlight. SteamOS is kinda being extended in this manner with people like ProfessorKaos64, but they can only do so much with no extensibility in the client and overlay, and it requires you to get dirty in the terminal. Valve needs to build a solid foundation that's shippable as a product (the minimum viable, at the bare minimum) and allows the community and other entities to extend the client. (The fact Steam can sell non-games can be relevant here, and maybe a workshop for the client itself?)

2. Product - You need to make a product. You're not going to succeed just because you're Linux. Linux just lets you make a product. Android and Chromebooks didn't take off because they're Linux based, but because they had what people wanted. And as of right now, people don't want Steam Machines, because of the problems outlined in the article, like the lack of purpose.

3. The long game - I'd estimate Steam Machines have been in production for ~4 years, presuming they started work in 2012 with Big Picture, and maybe even quite a while before that. Other consoles have been developed in less time, and with more success. There's little visible improvement or effort coming from Valve. If they wanted to ship it, then perhaps we shouldn't have been Early Access'd without an acknowledgment that this is a preview of a platform, not the end result. Especially so considering the glacial pace of improvement. People don't like the lack of communication or progress, especially with platforms; it implies uncertain or bad times.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

So, more thoughts, mostly in response to the other guy.

Ultimately: Think about Steam Machines as a product. Linux is great; this is why we're on a site talking about that. But that's not why Steam Machines would sell - the advantsges that Linux can bring can sell it, (like performance) but Linux itself will not sell machines. Linux (and other things, like Vulkan) is infrastructure for SteamOS, Arch, Ubuntu, whatever. It won't sell them; it's the things you can make with Linux that sell. As a community, we get caught up in technical minuta only to realize all that are just cogs that make the things on top that we really wanted to run. As such, their improvements benefit the whole system.

tl;dr: It's the gestalt, stupid.

On smaller things:

1. On discs - As stated, discs can be freely traded and resold. This is good for users, and retailers take advantage of this. In addition, for customers with slow internet, having the game on physical media is faster. (I don't think Steam Machines should have optical drives though; I think the advantages of digital are worth it, and so does Valve.)

2. On your comment of "desktop->Debian" - I had excised a footnote explaining the differences between Android and GNU/Linux, that "desktop Linux" implies. The rest of the stack on Android is extremely different, only the kernel is the same. (It irks me when people call Android Linux, implying it means much. RMS is right; GNU/Linux clarifies this big ambiguity. I have no idea if the Switch will be GNU/Linux or Android-like or completely different - if the stack and APIs are different, then Linux is simply a part of infrastructure that matters less than graphical and input APIs)

3. On automatic servicability - It means PCs are becoming more console-like in their simplicity. I admit it's a bit of a non-sequitur the way it is now.

4. On your performance and upgradability - Good for you. Vulkan helps (and should have helped a long time ago) but this isn't your system, is it?

5. On the number of games and AAA titles - As I stated, the situation gets better. However, people have their pet AAA (or not even AAA!) title they want. It doesn't matter how many games you have; if you don't have Fallout 4, you are dead to a large number of consumers. (And discovering and promoting these already existing games is another issue.)

6. On Linux winning with its nature - I covered this in the initial paragraph, but normal people don't care about the OS. For most, it may as well be etched on silicon. What matters if the experience you can create with Linux in your product, wether it be Steam Machines or Ubuntu.

7. On time and success - Valve has taken their time, with little to show for it, beyond what you could consider to be basically a beta launch. Things take time, but they come together in the end. It doesn't look like Steam Machines have. I'm not sure by what metric you can consider Steam Machines a success. They've barely sold and had a poor reception, with little improvements on that front. For GNU/Linux gaming, the situation has improved, but this is about Steam Machines.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Because:

1. Not everyone has a smart TV. (I don't)

2. Smart TVs are often quite miserable. Buggy, laggy, and insecure. Sometimes they even inject ads.

3. You might have a Chromecast or a Roku or whatever that does Netflix or whatever, but consoles are often these boxes that provide them.

4. The experience is often better and smoother. You can even add features - the Xbox 360 used to have (though I'm unsure why they removed it) party chat integrated into the client, allowing everyone to watch the same movie.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: elbuglioneVALVe need to COPY the Google strategy whith Android.
choose ONE third party hardware manufacturer by "generation". then, design and create their own SteamMachine

ie:
Google Nexus One(HTC)---> VALVe SteamBox Alchemist (Dell SteamOS 1)
Google Nexus S (Samsung)---> VALVe SteamBox Brewmaster (ZOTAC SteamOS 2)
Google Nexus 4 (LG)---> VALVe SteamBox ChaosKnight (DRIFT SteamOS 3)
Google Nexus 5 (LG)---> VALVe SteamBox Doom (HP SteamOS 4)
etc..

Industry really needs one point of reference to put things in order... and that order have to make the owner of SteamOS: VALVe.

Except Google gave up on the Nexus strategy and is going for Pixel - Google designed, and HTC is only involved in manufacturing. I think Google wants to rein in the OEMs (they don't like the poor updating and OEM bloat) and has the power - save for Samsung.

Basically, Google thinks a cathedral will work better, over their bazaar.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Thanks for the appreciation. Some quick comments:

On sobriety: I don't have any horses in Linux gaming, amazing as it sounds on this site - I'm more of a neutral observer. (I do use Linux and I do game, though just likely not at the same time.) However, I'm interested in the "meta" business of gaming, myself.

On exclusives: People state this, but I don't really know. You can enjoy the consoles without ever playing an exclusive. You can also see games that are PC, and as such, on Steam Machines, as exclusive to that "console." Timed exclusivity might be the better option as its a bit customer friendlier, and there exists the impatient.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

1a. If you want a console (appliance) like machine, then things need to just work. If they don't, then you have failed.

2a. Steam Machines need simple options, otherwise, choice paralysis kicks in. Have you seen the options on the hardware section, especially before it was pruned down by OEMs pulling out? How, as a consumer, could you compare all those options, and determine what was compatible with what you wanted, let alone the value of the machines? Again, if you want choices, you could have bought a PC.

2b. A problem is now you need to guarantee that games will be compatible for the machine, and automatically pick the right graphical configuration. For the sake of simplicity in this argument, we don't care that the user can change them, either to fix them or "break" (go out of bounds of reason) them. Now you need to put this overhead on all titles for whatever range of machines you have, and probably for older games as well. If you have more than one specification level, then you need some way to distinguish between then, and that needs to be simple as possible while carrying the nuance. This is solvable, but hard, yet necessary if you want the appliance factor.

3. Of course drivers need to improve. But if you're suggesting users should drop to the shell to fix issues there, then you lose the appliance factor.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

1a. I love my Steam Controller, the hardware is well designed, but the software is quite buggy. The Steam Overlay in BPM is quite buggy, and I can replicate issues in certain games like Cities: Skylines quite easily.

1b. The line between PC and console is blurry with Steam Machines, and it's not clear where it belongs. Maybe upgradeability in some respects is worth having, but then you shift the burden onto the user, fiscally and mentally. With a console, you're basically guaranteed 5-7 years of games in the lifecycle. With a PC, you have no such guarantees, and you'll need to upgrade in a way that makes sense fiscally and in compatibility, and this is on the user. I think the point of Steam Machines is to have an option that lets you skip past the complexity and experience PC games for a great price. (But maybe PC games aren't amenable to this - you can easily shoot yourself in the foot with improper graphics settings, especially if they didn't auto-configure, and mods, after all.)

2. I also definitely agree they need to get things like Twitch and Netflix into BPM. There's a lot of things where you can see the seeds for greater integration with other things. Why not Spotify instead of the built-in Steam music player? Why not Twitch streaming in Steam broadcasting? Why not Mumble instead of Steam's neglected voice chat? This should all be easily placed where the existing modules are, and easily usable with BPM. But it's all so half-baked.

3. I think Valve lacks the internal discipline and unity to push Steam Machines/OS as a platform, so all you're left with are OEMs who had to delay the launch by a year see low sales numbers. They have no interest in the success of the platform, only Valve does. But Valve doesn't either.

4. VR? In my console? It's more likely than you think. PSVR came out, and it's apparently pretty good for the price. Xbox One "Scorpio," the mid-life upgrade, will offer Vive and Oculus support, and again in Microsoft's last hardware event, they're pushing Windows on a variety of OEM-provided AR/VR/MR headsets. Valve would want to be careful if they want to be in charge of, let alone have a say, in this new VR world. (I myself don't really care much about VR...)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Disclaimer: I use Windows on my gaming PC and daily driver laptop, but I am very interested in the future of Steam Machines, and I use OpenBSD and Debian in a lot of places.

So, I've got a lot of thinkies going on here, and probably enough to merit a big article with proper organization and details. tl;dr: maybe culture clash, maybe no roadmap whatsoever. The key things are:

1. Valve employees work on whatever they want to work on. In addition, some employees get hired for a specific thing and fired right after its done. No one wants to move their desks to the Linux part, and/or people working on SteamOS were fired.

2. As such, little has been done. They talk a lot about the living room experience, but BPM is incredibly bare-bones, in addition to the regular deficiencies of the Steam client. Where's Netflix? Where's reliable and easy party chat? (Valve for whatever reason added movie rentals to Steam. I have no idea why.) Get these kind of quality of life apps developed with nice APIs available for them.

3. As a result of these two things, the only things happening to SteamOS are basically syncing with upstream Debian and Steam packages. BPM is also moving at a glacial pace, when its loaded with bugs. (Valve HAS been working on VR on Linux though, and that is major though.)

4a. SteamOS basically was a response to what turned out to be a bluff - Microsoft going full App Store with Windows 8. This didn't happen, and Gabe's paranoia was defused. Except now Microsoft is pushing their own store again, albeit they maintain (and for the enterprise market, it must be) it is an open platform. Steamworks works in appx containers for Win32, and they're actively fixing issues with UWP. And now Microsoft is actively pushing Xbox Live interoperability on Windows, like joining parties and even games. Now they actually HAVE cross-buy with Xbox and Windows, which they announced with their big Surface reveal. And even then, if Microsoft did start closing it, who is to say they wouldn't get developers and publishers to follow?

4b. Maybe Steam Machines were just a front to get games ported to desktop Linux, and Valve had no intent of supporting it. Food for thought.

5a. I think your remarks on PCification/Consolification are a bit off. Consoles do a lot of stuff because people expect them too - they've become digital hubs of the HTPC kind. (I won't get into the specifics of the difference between Microsoft and Sony's strategy, and then the tablet aspect of Nintendo's.) Anyways, even with the added complexity that consoles have taken as a result of it, they're still easy to use plug and play appliance with no worries over compatibility. (Though I worry over the mid-life upgrades they're adding, that is, PS4 Pro and Scorpio.) The architecture doesn't matter, the consoles offer the experience, games, and now the social network.

5b. Steam Machines bring the complexity of PC gaming to consoles - you have to worry about specifications, mid-life part upgrades, compatibility, lifecycles, etc. In addition, the OEMs have little interest in promoting the platform. (Oddly, Dell seems to be the only one interested in pushing it - they put more effort in than Valve at times.) I don't care about openness in an appliance (sorry GNU people, you know it to be true) - I want it to work well. If I have to fight Gnome Shell, OBS, and Mumble with a controller, or fiddle with config files, then that's a terrible living room experience. Otherwise, if I could cope with this, I could build a PC and get flexibility instead.

5c. And that's what I think Valve needs to realize - the strengths of the Steam Machines. Design and make (contract out manufacture to HTC - works for Google and Valve) your own box, maybe cut out the OEMs, (simplify choice, avoid brand dilution) and put effort into making a smooth way to experience PC gaming. Fix the problems, subsidize prices down so they're comparable to the big 3, advertise it, and get games onto the platform. I know Valve have good industrial design chops, as seen with their controller. You need one or two boxes maximum, with long lifecycles. If I have to refer to a spec sheet to wonder if the game works, you fail it. You don't have to lock it tight, (let people have SSH on it, or keep the Gnome session, but you shouldn't be expected to use it. maybe upgradeable HW?) but if you want openness as a priority, then you can get a PC. If you want a no-hassle way to get games from Fallout (port that) to Europa Universalis (not available on consoles) to CS:GO. (only available in a crippled form) Complexity only comes as you need it, not forced onto you as part of the platform.

6. I wonder if there's a fundamental culture clash. PC gamers don't like console gaming and don't see their strengths, and vice versa. I think it's possible for there to be a balance - I'd love a "just works" box that plays PC games I can't get (or can't get cheaply) elsewhere, but as of right now, Steam Machines take the worst of both worlds. There's also the issue that Valve's organizational structure is poorly suited to support and push a platform. It's a miracle Steam runs as it does.

View this comment - View article - View full comments