
What Valve got right and wrong with the Steam Machine - bpierre
http://www.polygon.com/2015/10/15/9536047/steam-machine-alienware-hands-on-video
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zubirus
Overall I love the Steam Machines idea. I have many games in my library and I
can't wait to play them in the living room with my friends. I think that what
Valve got wrong was just two topics:

\- There is no game compatibility information. When I buy a console game, I
_know_ that the game will be compatible with my system. There is no such
guaranty with Steam games. I would like to see a simplified benchmark tailored
to pre-made Steam Machines so that consumers can understand how well they'll
play their AAA games.

\- They lost momentum with the SteamOS platform, and many developers are now
skeptical of porting their games to Linux. The Steam Machines were supposed to
be launched one year ago and with them their Linux platform. Some developers
took a big investment to port their games to Linux and fight around subpar
OpenGL drivers. When they were done there was no Steam Machines and they were
met with a Linux userbase of just 1%. Now, I believe, we'll only see more
Linux launches once the developers trust the Steam Machines as an established
gaming platform.

Edit: formatting

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StavrosK
Does the second point matter any more? Most of the big engines I'm aware of
make portability to all three (or even five) platforms effortless, so there's
really no excuse to not having a version for each platform any more...

~~~
pjmlp
Increase in continuous integration infrastructure, additional testing
scenarios, new deployment configurations, new driver issues to deal with,...

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StavrosK
...whole new market...

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pjmlp
It already exists, there are plenty of companies specialized in such porting
action.

However, the question is the ROI in supporting the platform vs sales, even if
the code doesn't need any major change.

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padobson
I look at the console world and feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

The massive reduction in cost of hardware has enabled every device to get
smart. And, surprise surprise, the first things to get smart were the things
with screens - phones and TVs.

Video game consoles (and all set-top boxes) hearken back to an era where the
average house only had one TV, and it was dumb.

These days, there's a dozen screens in the home, and all of them have
computing power many times greater than even the original XBox - more than
enough juice to power a huge catalogue of existing games.

So why do big game companies (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and now Valve) still
feel they need to make hardware?

And I'm not suggesting that these companies give up their 1st party platform
advantage - just that their platform doesn't need to be hardware anymore. A
cross-platform Nintendo App that runs the Nintendo VM and stores all of your
games in the cloud makes a lot more sense than building a second rate piece of
hardware and managing the supply chain to get it to the living room.

The only area where you can argue hardware is still necessary is the
controller - afterall, our hands haven't changed that much and immersive
gaming experiences haven't adapted well to touch screens. But surely it'd be
easier to manage a supply chain for bluetooth controllers than it would a
console.

If you add cloud graphics processing to the mix to overcome the horsepower
issues of lesser hardware, something NVidia and Sony have both demonstrated at
this point, then there's absolutely no reason to continue to push hardware
other than inertia.

~~~
wjoe
"Cloud gaming" has plenty of issues with performance and latency (see the now-
defunct OnLive) and is too reliant on a user's internet connection. TVs may
have better hardware than 10 year old consoles but certainly aren't anywhere
near current generation consoles.

It might work for low end or previous generation games, but for cutting edge
high-end AAA games, you absolutely need cutting edge high-end hardware.

Not to mention, TV software is an absolute mess of unstandardised differing
software between every manufacturer, so it would be very difficult for game
makers to get their software/games to work on every TV.

~~~
padobson
_It might work for low end or previous generation games_

You may be right that the cloud tech needed to support the best XBox One and
PS4 offerings isn't there yet, but Nintendo has been pushing under-powered
hardware for generations now. And I don't know about you, but most of my Steam
games would work fine on state of the art hardware from the early 2000s. A
pseudo-incumbent like Nintendo and a potential disruptor like Valve should
absolutely be thinking this way.

And I don't think TV software should be an issue. Virtualization should be a
trivial problem for tech companies of this size.

~~~
HelloMcFly
> And I don't know about you, but most of my Steam games would work fine on
> state of the art hardware from the early 2000s.

Most of my games probably would, but the games I care most about _right now_
would definitely not.

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taude
While not the same as the Steam Machine, I got one of the Steam Link streaming
boxes for $50. It's pretty amazing and can't believe how well it works.

I've only played Rocket League, Pay Day 2, Monanco, and Super Meat boy on my
television.

For me, it's the perfect compromise for my casual gaming. I get to have a
custom built PC, hidden away in my office and a tiny box on the living room.

I look forward to seeing the platform evolve.

~~~
josefresco
Glad to hear it works well as I'm considering it.

Curious: Is either your gaming PC, and/or the Steam Link box wired?

~~~
mu_killnine
Not the OP but I did have both sides wireless for a while and it couldn't keep
the framerate up (playing Portal). I have an i7 920 @3.6Ghz, 680GTX, 12GB RAM
on the main machine. I was streaming to my late-2013 MBP 15". I have an AC1750
802.11ac router.

Once I wired my desktop in, I could play wirelessly via my MBP with 60fps
constantly.

I suspect if both were wired you'd have excellent performance. However, one
caveat is that low-light games really seem to show a lot of artifacts (for
example, Amnesia: The Dark Descent was close to unplayable because of
compression artifacts, despite being on 'highest quality' stream settings).

I hope this is helpful.

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jessaustin
_A Steam Machine is a PC running Linux. You can do whatever you want. We 're
not going to do anything to get in your way or lock it down. A lot of people
are going to buy it and plug it in and only run Steam. That's cool. We also
think, given history, there's a pretty good chance that users are going to
find something new that we have not anticipated that's going to be super
awesome, that's going to make a bunch of other customers really happy. To the
extent that we can add value and make that more likely to happen, that's what
we're going to do._

I shed a tear of joy. A company that isn't run by soulless MBAs, about to
curb-stomp a bunch of companies that are.

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n0us
Marketing I think was the key here. The Steam Machine needs to appeal to
people who are not previously exposed to PC gaming. People who already play PC
games have PCs to play them and hooking up a computer to a television is
trivial. Most of them probably know what the Steam Machine is, but if I asked
any of my 'XBox' or 'Playstation' friends they wouldn't have the slightest
clue what Steam is, let alone the Steam Machine. Why would they? I haven't
seen any advertising anywhere. In combination with the general negative
stereotypes about PC gaming (not the least of which comes from the name PC
Master Race) I don't see any what that this could catch on.

~~~
moron4hire
Who are these people who are exclusively PC or console or mobile gamers?
Everyone I know, rich and poor, are all three.

~~~
n0us
Most guys I know play Xbox/PS4 and some mobile games. I know maybe a few
people who play computer games on top of that, and plenty of people who just
play mobile. PC games are generally seen as 1. extremely expensive since the
cost of computers is high especially if you dan't build one yourself and 2.
only for hardcore gamers. Most console gamers I know don't want to compete
with the PC gamers, its like when I play Call of Duty and get slaughtered
every single round but worse. The atmosphere is one in which you win at any
expense, even that of the game being fun to play.

These perceptions may be wholly inaccurate but they will remain until
demonstrated otherwise.

~~~
ionised
The price factor has always struck me as a case of not having enough
information on PC hardware and game requirements (which is understandable if
you only know console gaming).

You don't need to go all-out on top-end graphics cards, processors, cases and
watercooling to play PC games at a similar or higher standard (in terms of
graphical quality and framerate) to consoles.

A mid-range PC may or may cost a little more than a console but the fantastic
savings that come from things like Steam sales mean you can for example, pick
up 5-10 games over Christmas for a fraction of the price of doing the same
with the XBox/Playstation versions of those games can mean it ends up being a
lot cheaper in the long run.

Of course, knowing about the prices of PC hardware and how to put together the
best bang-for buck system is something you would have to consider. That
knowledge is unnecessary with consoles.

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zxcvcxz
So yeah I see some complaints about Linux, but there is no way Windows or OS X
would have been a better choice for a product like this. Steam Machines are
supposed to be the Android of the console world. Valve would have had to work
closely with MS to create some locked down platform to keep people from
screwing it up. You couldn't just slap stock Windows on there... and imagine
the licensing fees. Linux was the best choice.

I do believe that when Vulcan comes out and Valve or some other company throws
some money at advertising, steam machines could easily come to dominate the
console market, just as Android came to dominate the smart phone market.

~~~
ksk
>steam machines could easily come to dominate the console market,

What extra value would it provide over existing consoles?

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acd
If Valve would join forces with Google merging ChromeOS & SteamOS -> AndroidPC
then Microsoft will have to watch out.

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/29/9639950/google-
combining-...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/29/9639950/google-combining-
android-chromeos-report)

Then you would have a device with world class apps+good gaming experiance
combined with a good user interface.

~~~
aqzman
I doubt it would ever happen, but I really wouldn't be surprised if Google
attempted to acquire Value. They've been making moves to get in to the
"casual" gaming space with Google Play and the Nexus Player. If they purchased
Value they would effectively own a large segment of the "hardcore" PC gaming
market share.

Again, I doubt it would ever happen, but it's interesting to consider what the
impacts would be if they did. I don't think Value is for sale, and if it were
Microsoft would be much more likely to purchase them.

~~~
corin_
They would have to pay more for Valve than any other company they've ever
acquired with the exception of Motorola, I think. And I'm still not even sure
Valve would say yes, even to a $10b offer (I'd hazard a guess at a fair offer
being $5b-10b).

~~~
dubcanada
I really doubt Gabe would ever sell. He's just not that type of person, and
Google would get zero benefit from Steam, its not their realm at all.

~~~
corin_
Completely agree about the not selling. Not so sure that Google would get zero
benefit, though.

Firstly, Valve is _extremely_ profitable, crazily so, and seems (imo) unlikely
to stop being so profitable, so short of a crazily high PE ratio it would
eventually pay for itself. Secondly, they'd be buying a userbase of 100m+,
including presumably lots of interesting data from steam chat, gaming
preferances, etc.

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jeletonskelly
I'm hoping someone with more knowledge about Direct3D/DirectX could clarify
some things for me. Since we're seeing a lot of progress on .NET running on
OSX and Linux, does this mean that at some point you'll be able to run Windows
games on both OSX and Linux? If not, what are the major hurdles there?

~~~
voltagex_
I don't think there are a huge number of Steam games running on .NET, but the
number might be increasing due to the rise of Unity.

Many, many games are written in C++ and require reasonable porting efforts to
get to Linux support. Someone like Ryan C Gordon (icculus) is much better
qualified to comment on that, though.

I doubt Microsoft would ever port DirectX to Linux, but then again I doubted
they'd do that with .NET, and look where we are.

The DirectX->Wine code works pretty well, but it's always going to be behind
the state of the art.

~~~
kbwt
There is already a native Direct3D 9 implementation on Linux, called Gallium
Nine. It works with any driver exposing the Gallium interface, such as the
open source radeon driver.

