Saturday, March 3rd 2012
Valve Working On Its Own Gaming Hardware, the "Steam Box"
Valve is not short of competition in game development, publishing, or even providing digital distribution and DRM services of games made by various publishers, which went on to become an arm-shot for indie game developers. The next frontier for Valve backing up the potent open game distribution platform that Steam is, with a potent hardware platform, its very own gaming hardware platform.
The only difference here is that unlike Xbox, PlayStation or Wii, which are close-ended hardware platforms manufactured solely by the people behind them, that's Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, respectively, Valve's console will will be open-ended. The physical consoles will be made by various partners (just like NVIDIA GeForce is sold by various NVIDIA partners, such as EVGA, ASUS and ZOTAC). Valve will govern and mandate baseline hardware specifications, which partners have to meet, to ensure the platform delivers a consistent gaming experience to players.
Here's the kicker. Steam Box is essentially an x86 machine that's designed well enough (in form and function) to compete with consoles. Its baseline specifications are not finalized, but it's rumored that Alienware X51 was designed anticipating those baseline specifications from Valve, with the intent that it could be retroactively upgradable to Valve's Steam Box platform firmware. This makes the Steam Box more like an open-platform evolution of the first-generation Xbox, which was x86 and PC GPU-powered. Further, the idea is to give this platform control consistency that consoles enjoy, which is, having a standard game controller. Valve filed a patent for such a controller, in 2011.
Steam Box will also revolutionize the way gamers experience games, not just with visual, aural, or rumble feedback, but realtime biometric feedback, which engages more human senses. "You won't ever look back," The Verge quoted its sources as saying, commenting on this feature. To experience realtime biometric feedback, sources postulate gamers as having to wear a device that resembles a bracelet, or integrated with the main controller. The platform will also tout Valve's Big Picture mode. "With big picture mode, gaming opportunities for Steam partners and customers become possible via PCs and Macs on any TV or computer display in the house," the company is quoted as saying.
To make Steam Box immune to naysayers and cynics screaming "vaporware" from rooftops, Valve is reportedly announcing this platform later this month, at GDC.
Source:
The Verge
The only difference here is that unlike Xbox, PlayStation or Wii, which are close-ended hardware platforms manufactured solely by the people behind them, that's Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, respectively, Valve's console will will be open-ended. The physical consoles will be made by various partners (just like NVIDIA GeForce is sold by various NVIDIA partners, such as EVGA, ASUS and ZOTAC). Valve will govern and mandate baseline hardware specifications, which partners have to meet, to ensure the platform delivers a consistent gaming experience to players.
Steam Box will also revolutionize the way gamers experience games, not just with visual, aural, or rumble feedback, but realtime biometric feedback, which engages more human senses. "You won't ever look back," The Verge quoted its sources as saying, commenting on this feature. To experience realtime biometric feedback, sources postulate gamers as having to wear a device that resembles a bracelet, or integrated with the main controller. The platform will also tout Valve's Big Picture mode. "With big picture mode, gaming opportunities for Steam partners and customers become possible via PCs and Macs on any TV or computer display in the house," the company is quoted as saying.
To make Steam Box immune to naysayers and cynics screaming "vaporware" from rooftops, Valve is reportedly announcing this platform later this month, at GDC.
79 Comments on Valve Working On Its Own Gaming Hardware, the "Steam Box"
linux and mac os currently run a hacked out version.
however this may not be a problem if they pull Nvidia onboard as a partner. As i do believe Nvidia own 3dfx glide. This would be a bit of a programming hash up to get it back up to current specs. However it could have the bonus knock on effect of finally allowing linux and mac os the opportunity to compete in gaming. Open GL could also be used, But i would be under the impression that valve alone could not manage the workload to get the API to function without breaking copyrights, It would be down to a Gfx developer to make a solution.
Furthermore it could see a lock out of games for windows. Since a free program that can cope with directx style information, Either under emulation or with a decode would in effect allow developers a choice they have been denied for a long time.
PC specs for gaming don't need to be super hot, Provided you have adequate specs to run at 30fps, and enough graphical punch to use all the tricks then you can use a pretty basic model. Unlike a pc you won't have people comparing numbers overclocking. So the system can probably cope on a dual core mATX style system, with a sub £100 gfx card. Forget about the high end stuff as they simply will not need it. This means a sub £250 system should be viable. Steam could buff this by reducing your graphics options, and optimising for 30fps.
I would expect it to be running something along the lines of a sandybridge g620, mATX, 2Gb ram, Gtx 560, and a budget green hard disc. You can build this sort of configuration for £250-300 currently at store prices. And it would play most games at 30FPS, at decent settings. That's without having bulk discounts and optimisation in the mix.
I believe the deciding factor will be directX overall, as i can't see M$ giving up it's software to a competitor, especially when it could be damaging to xbox and windows sales in general.
I don't think MS will mind.
As for not hurting windows.
Free linux with full game support, I'd have it on every machine i own. I would never buy another copy of windows again as too would a huge number of PC gamers. Linux is just a better OS in terms of stability, and resource management since you can do what you want with it. And most programs have a linux variant, just like macs do.
It makes much more sense to use a Windows back-end for Windows games.
Steam boxes would be a supplement to Steam, not an entire platform of itself. It can leverage the existing library on steam to become popular. To make it an entirely separate platform would be competing with Microsoft and Sony, and would be a bad idea.
i just wish valve use linux. i hate using windows
kotaku.com/5890275/is-this-a-photo-of-valves-rumored-console
If they launch with that configuration the its going to bomb.
(blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX)
Question is, will I be able to build my own PC that will be able to run the SteamBox?
kotaku.com/5890275/is-this-a-photo-of-valves-rumored-console
I wonder if mobile GPU is a smart way to go... IMO a discrete desktop GPU would do better. Perhaps it's too expensive?
nothing new here but i am interested to see if the steam name helps it sell as others have tried this before and failed.
If Valve steps in and starts offering balanced gaming PC's for a decent price, they will change the entire market.
Clearly I can see Valve using a custom gaming OS to keep things secure and hopefully a custom gaming Windows OS which is mostly stripped down of all unnecessary applications, but has enhanced services to both existing needed applications as well as added applications that are needed too. The only thing that can be done now is wait and see what comes of this with the news to come.
Some people here seem happy and mention how great of an idea this is. But the way I see it is that (and I'm BOTH PC and console gamer) they want console gamers to jump to "PC gaming" (which really wouldn't be PC gaming anymore) and promote PC game development.
But console gamers will still buy their consoles. They want their Zelda, God of War, and the bunch of other games that will never see light outside of consoles.
PC gamers will still stick to their PCs. I can hardly see someone who's all into WoW, Starcraft, Dragon Age, and Skyrim drop the advantages that their keyboard and mouse bring for some console-PC hybrid thing with a fancy controller.
On an unrelated note, I'm looking forward to Wii U.