
Steam releases Big Picture mode - baq
http://store.steampowered.com/bigpicture/
======
w1ntermute
There's an excellent post on The Verge forums called "Forget the PS4 and the
Xbox 720, build your own Steambox on the cheap"[0]. It will be very exciting
to see if a significant number of gamers (many of whom are already familiar
with building their own PCs) take the initiative to go down this road.

A nice auxiliary advantage of building a Steambox is that you can use it as a
full-featured HTPC as well, since it runs a desktop OS.

0: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3706718/forget-the-
ps4-an...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3706718/forget-the-ps4-and-the-
xbox-720-build-your-own-steambox-on-the-cheap)

~~~
sliverstorm
I did literally just this last week, with an ITX motherboard, a 65W APU
(Trinity), and a case to match. I'm quite pleased with the results, and with
Big Picture mode (given it *was still Beta)

~~~
squidsoup
Would you consider blogging about this? I'd like to do something similar next
year.

~~~
sliverstorm
I wouldn't mind writing about it, but I don't exactly have a blog. What is a
good medium for a one-shot post like that?

~~~
kmfrk
Ironically, Medium: <http://medium.com>.

Otherwise, Tumblr or a gist powered by <http://gist.io>.

~~~
sliverstorm
Well guys, here's a first pass:

<http://gist.io/4199804>

Is this something I should be submitting to HN directly?

Also, let me know if there's any particular pieces of information you want
expanded/shared. I haven't yet had an opportunity for photos or video of use
this evening.

~~~
damncabbage
Please do submit it; this is a great write-up. :)

~~~
sliverstorm
Well folks, I don't think we'll be seeing it on the front page. Perhaps I need
to work on my titling.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4872751>

Hopefully those who were interested have already had a chance to read it, by
now.

------
mmanfrin
Now they just need to let us keep multiple boxes logged in at the same time. I
don't like having to relogin on my settop.

~~~
sliverstorm
Yes, it's particularly troublesome with Big Picture- isn't the idea that I'm
going to have this connected to my TV, i.e. _without a keyboard_?

I can live with being unable to run games on two computers at the same time,
but I wish I could stay logged in on two computers. Or at least, I don't know,
pass a token.

------
tarice
Watching this, I'm reminded of the OUYA. Isn't this exactly what they were
trying to accomplish?

In fact, it seems to me that Valve's Big Picture, combined with the ability to
"make your own Steambox", completely trumps the OUYA.

Why would a game developer want to create a new port of their game to a
completely new system when they could just optionally add controller support
and publish to Steam?

Valve's got the player-base and game library, and now they're in the living
room. Is OUYA's niche gone?

~~~
wmf
Ouya is $100, a Steambox is ~$300, and the next gen consoles may be $400+.

~~~
Raphael
In some ways, this is an advantage for selling games through Steam. If someone
can't afford a decent computer, how likely are they to pay for games? And they
will probably expect lower prices, especially if the assets are smaller and
simpler.

------
AshleysBrain
I'm a HTML5 game dev so not really positioned to comment on the main story,
but I did try out the Big Picture browser:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; Valve Steam Tenfoot/2095; )
AppleWebKit/535.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.989.0 Safari/535.11

So, Chrome 18. What is it with Chrome 18 given Chrome for Android is also
stuck on that version? Maybe coincidence and slow release cycles... (Also,
Tenfoot? Hmm)

I also tried playing a HTML5 game with it, which could be awesome with gamepad
support. It seemed to freeze the browser and kept playing sounds in a loop,
even after I had exited Steam... had to reboot to get rid of it. Guess it
needs some work.

~~~
xxbondsxx
Re: Tenfoot, it's apparently a term used to describe TV-sized GUI's:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-foot_user_interface>

Imagine a responsive web design that goes from 10-foot all the way down to
mobile; now that would be impressive!

~~~
Already__Taken
That would be easy the hard part is solving the responsive image problem. How
can we know what quality image to send to a device?

The problems are shifting from display/device types to network types. Great
you've got a 1080p phone but we can't shove down our retina quality images on
3g. Nor would you want use to use your battery life for that.

------
nullymcnull
Even better, the update finally includes the ability to install games to
drives other than the one steam itself is installed to.

~~~
TobiasFunkeMD
AWESOME! I've been waiting for this! I've got an SSD that I only want to
install certain games on because it is not big enough.

------
rdl
I'm slightly confused how to use this. I have a gaming PC and a 1080p
projector. I was always planning to just run an HDMI cable from the 4th output
of my 2 cards into the AVR, and then get a second wireless keyboard or
something to use when gaming at the couch, rather than a dedicated HTPC for
gaming (I use an old macbook pro for ht, along with
ps3/xbox360/appletv/googletv)

------
baq
...eagerly waiting for the steambox announcement.

------
tomkit
I haven't tried AppleTV's Airplay, but I think it just mirrors your desktop
correct? So theoretically you could just run Steam's Big Picture Mode off of a
Mac and use AirPlay to stream it to your TV?

~~~
ConstantineXVI
I've attempted this; AirPlay does in fact lag too much for this to be useful.

~~~
tomkit
Seems like Apple hasn't mastered video streaming compression as well as
OnLive. OnLive seemed pretty playable to me when I tried it.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
OnLive's protocol seems to be far more willing to sacrifice frames and quality
to keep everything in sync; where AirPlay will (in my experience) hold up the
stream until every last frame gets through, sync be damned. Also, AirPlay
doesn't modify apps or input at all to compensate for the lag to the TV.

------
Tichy
Could this be the first online movie rental service that runs on Linux? That
would be very exciting news.

------
baby
I just tried it and it's awesome!

But I can see something more awesome, what if Steam would sell hardware? Like
a new steambox every year like Apple does with the iPhone.

They have an incredible catalog of games, a new steam box would just be more
powerful but would still be able to play all the old games.

------
venus
I'm looking forward to trying this out with my Mac Mini, which I use as an
XBMC machine plugged into the TV. Hopefully the built-in HD4000 integrated
graphics will suffice for Portal.

I need a controller. Which is the best one to get?

~~~
venus
Let me answer my own question: apparently the xbox 360 controller is the only
one supported.

Source:
[http://steamcommunity.com/groups/bigpicture/discussions/1/88...](http://steamcommunity.com/groups/bigpicture/discussions/1/882964117727007186/)

~~~
Bockit
Not sure about portal, but I've used a PS3 controller with software that
emulates xbox 360 controllers. It was fairly difficult to get set up and then
running every time but once it was running it was rock solid. Played my way
through Lara Croft: Guardians of the light with it.

I _think_ it was this: <http://motioninjoy.com/download>

------
10098
Make a console, Valve!

~~~
Shish2k
I'd think it's fairly obvious that that's their step after next :P

(the immediate next step being "make the linux games catalog decently large",
so they don't need to bloat their $300 console with an extra $150 of MS
licensing)

On a tangent -- does anyone know how developing games for linux compares to
developing games for consoles? I've heard windows devs complain about linux
("Braid will never be available on linux because ALSA is shit and
fundamentally can't handle it", etc etc), but it seems that the valve
console'd be more competing against the PS4 / xbox720 / etc, and I wonder if
those devkits are better or worse...

~~~
10098
> Braid will never be available on linux because ALSA is shit and
> fundamentally can't handle it

I don't buy it, tons of games with sound effects have been successfully ported
to linux with no problems. Probably the devs are just being lazy :-)

------
lubujackson
Just curious, how is this any different than using the TV as a
projector/second screen? What exactly makes Big Picture, well, anything?

~~~
Raphael
Bigger buttons and text, navigable with a gamepad and readable from a
distance. Also, a text input method for use with a gamepad.

------
james4k
Even though it's called Big Picture mode, it looks like it could potentially
make a great touch interface.

------
nickvanhoog
This made me play games for the first time in ages, it's a great feature
that's a delight to turn on.

------
stock_toaster
I wonder if steam will eventually add other media (movies, tvshows, etc) to
their ecosystem.

~~~
missing_cipher
They have "Indie Game: The Movie": <http://store.steampowered.com/app/207080>

So they may add more stuff in the future.

------
mdonahoe
Anyone have an good suggestions for a controller? I'll probably just get an
Xbox one.

~~~
Already__Taken
Having the 360 controller compatibility is part of any games for windows live
certification, plus most games have xbox support anyway it's as close to a de-
facto standard controller you can get.

I'm not saying that has anything to do with steam but if I were a game dev and
could only be bothered to support 1 controller that's the one I would spend
the time supporting.

------
jfaucett
Steam is rockin it!

------
drivebyacct2
My mind is still being blown from TF2 running better in Linux than I've _ever,
ever, ever_ had any Source game run in Windows.

~~~
jrockway
Is that from the private beta, or did I miss an announcement regarding wider
distribution?

~~~
w1ntermute
The Linux client is still in private beta, but you can easily circumvent it by
just downloading the .deb and installing/running it on Linux anyway. FWIW, I
wasn't invited to the beta right away, but about a week after I started
running it anyway, I was invited.

The only issue you might run into is that it'll sometimes say your account is
not authorized to use the Linux beta, but there are directions online on how
to get around this by adding some flags and launching it from the CLI.

I'm not sure why I bothered though, since my Linux ultrabook can barely run
any games anyway.

~~~
ekianjo
I did install the .deb, but when launching the client I get a message that I
am not invited to the beta yet and that I cannot use this - then closes. Any
work-around ?

~~~
w1ntermute
Run "steam steam://open/games" from the CLI to launch it instead. Try a couple
times if it doesn't work the first time.

[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/11/reddit-users-bypass-
valve...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/11/reddit-users-bypass-valve-linux-
beta-invitations)

