Valve Announces Steam OS

[btarunr]

People looking forward to the big "Steambox" announcement were met by an anticlimax. Valve announced its own operating system for PC gamers, which turns any PC into a "Steambox." Simply named Steam OS, the operating system is a highly modified Debian Linux stripped to bare, with all its non-essentials tossed out, and proprietary multimedia CODECs added, along with fonts, runtime environments, and in-built drivers for popular GPU, sound card, and gaming-peripheral brands. In essence, there's everything in the operating system for PC gamers, and then some.

Steam diversified from distributing PC games to non-gaming PC software, and Valve plans to take that further by doing groundwork for its very own living room content-delivery platform to compete with the likes of Xbox One. Since Steam OS can be deployed onto x86-based PCs as tiny as an Intel NUC, it stands more than a half chance. Its baby-steps are taken with In-home Streaming, a feature that lets you stream content off a PC or Mac in your house. You can share games in your account with others in your family, and close friends, using the recently-announced Family Sharing feature. You get content-blocking features and restricted-accounts. You also get media-player software that lets you organize and play back music and videos in most open- and proprietary formats. You should be able to install popular web-browsers like Google Chrome. Steam OS is competitively priced against Windows 8.1 and OS X 10.9, at $0. Did we tell you that some of its icons look like companion cubes? Just kidding.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[NinkobEi]

Right now Steam can't run in the windows store API. Gabe made a bunch of comments about this around the release of win 8. So this OS should protect them from Windows 9 if MS decides to only let it use windows-api approved apps.

Also giving game devs a free OS to work with should help a lot of smaller companies. Good move by Mr. Newell

 

[Mathragh]

Yay. another closed platform!


While it sounds great, being based on Linux and all, I hope people wont forget this is essentially an attempt to wall off all competition.

Edit: ofc this post is mostly a rant, but I felt some counterbalance was needed

 

[NinkobEi]

Yay. another closed platform!


While it sounds great, being based on Linux and all, I hope people wont forget this is essentially an attempt to wall off all competition.

Edit: ofc this post is mostly a rant, but I felt some counterbalance was needed

What competition? I dont think you can even classify Origin's marketplace as in the same league. Have you sat down and actually tried to use Origin?

 

[erocker]

Yay. another closed platform!

What's this "closed platform" you speak of?

 

[btarunr]

Yay. another closed platform!


While it sounds great, being based on Linux and all, I hope people wont forget this is essentially an attempt to wall off all competition.

Edit: ofc this post is mostly a rant, but I felt some counterbalance was needed

You get a special TF3 hat for replacing your Windows installation with Steam OS. Your argument is invalid.

 

[Mathragh]

What's this "closed platform" you speak of?

Well, can other software makers bring out games/software on SteamOS without valve getting some money from it aswell?

In my initial post I assumed the SteamOS financially works just like steam on the PC at this moment. If not please correct me!

 

[erocker]

In my initial post I assumed the SteamOS works just like steam on the PC at this moment. If not please correct me!

Due to lack of information, this cannot be assumed or corrected.

As far as making a little money off of it. I have no problem with it. Valve is a business, they're in business to make money. The O/S is free...

There's plenty of versions of free Linux out there.

 

[NinkobEi]

Well, can other software makers bring out games/software on SteamOS without valve getting some money from it aswell?

In my initial post I assumed the SteamOS financially works just like steam on the PC at this moment. If not please correct me!

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/
"SteamOS will be available soon as a free download for users and as a freely licensable operating system for manufacturers. Stay tuned in the coming days for more information."

 

[Fourstaff]

As long as the games are running on OpenCL I think it will be relatively easy to port them to Linux I think. Windows is going to be in trouble when gaming goes to Linux en mase, it may (or may not) signify the start of many people getting comfortable with something "foreign".

 

[Crap Daddy]

Question is why would I turn my PC in a steambox?

 

[Gavin]

pfft once i can game on linux, bye windows.

 

[btarunr]

Windows is going to be in trouble when gaming goes to Linux en mase

That won't happen, because every big game publisher (EA/Ubisoft/Activision/etc.) is in bed with Microsoft, because it gives them not one, but two platforms to make money off of - Windows and Xbox.

 

[Mathragh]

Due to lack of information, this cannot be assumed or corrected.

As far as making a little money off of it. I have no problem with it. Valve is a business, they're in business to make money.

There's plenty of versions of free Linux out there.

Yeah, well I was just trying to make the point that this essentially is not different from things like an apple appstore, or the windows marketplace for that matter.

I just find it notable that gabe himself expressed such negative feelings towards things like the windows 8 marketplace, while now having made an OS that also works on the same basis.

But indeed you are right, we're not sure about that yet, although I find it hard to believe that valve would allow a company like EA to also let origin function on SteamOS.

Ohwell! atleast we'll have another competitor in the console-ish market.


Edit:

Question is why would I turn my PC in a steambox?

This is exactly what I was also thinking and trying to convey. Perhaps the usability of the SteamOS is a bit better behind a TV compared to windows, but you wont have any choices left apart from what you can do on SteamOS, where every payment presumably goes through valve.

 

[Fourstaff]

That won't happen, because every big game publisher (EA/Ubisoft/Activision/etc.) is in bed with Microsoft, because it gives them not one, but two platforms to make money off of - Windows and Xbox.

PS4 uses OpenCL I believe, if that is true more future games will be coded in OpenCL for multiplatform releases. A good start.

 

[btarunr]

PS4 uses OpenCL I believe, if that is true more future games will be coded in OpenCL for multiplatform releases. A good start.

OpenGL is an API, not a runtime environment. Despite using the same APIs, PlayStation and Steam OS are two very different platforms that are not binary-compatible with each other. Cross-platform support is the headache of whoever is providing a game studio an engine (CryEngine, Dunia, Source, etc.) anyway. Valve only succeeded in making indie devs port their stuff to Linux, close to none of the big publishers did.

 

[sunweb]

Nothing truly excited. Why would they need to make a new distro when they could just release sdk for games and polished steam client.
And the second part is even worse. This stuff will only stream. Did i get it right? Why would i need to install new distro just for streaming?

 

[Crap Daddy]

Well, in order to run steamos you need a machine. What would that be? Maybe next announcement will clear this, steamos + steambox. On the other hand people building a new PC just for entertainment purposes might consider installing steamos since it's free.

 

[_Zod_]

Yeah, well I was just trying to make the point that this essentially is not different from things like an apple appstore, or the windows marketplace for that matter.

I just find it notable that gabe himself expressed such negative feelings towards things like the windows 8 marketplace, while now having made an OS that also works on the same basis.

But indeed you are right, we're not sure about that yet, although I find it hard to believe that valve would allow a company like EA to also let origin function on SteamOS.

Ohwell! atleast we'll have another competitor in the console-ish market.


Edit:

This is exactly what I was also thinking and trying to convey. Perhaps the usability of the SteamOS is a bit better behind a TV compared to windows, but you wont have any choices left apart from what you can do on SteamOS, where every payment presumably goes through valve.

While steam is basically a DRM'd app store for games like iTunes (expanding its offerins to general software), the Steam OS will be whatever Linux distro they choose to use with Big Picture slapped on it. The OS itself won't be locked out to competition. I only hope that they are using a core distro such as Fedora or Debian and not Ubuntu etc.

 

[Fourstaff]

OpenGL is an API, not a runtime environment. Despite using the same APIs, PlayStation and Steam OS are two very different platforms that are not binary-compatible with each other. Cross-platform support is the headache of whoever is providing a game studio an engine (CryEngine, Dunia, Source, etc.) anyway. Valve only succeeded in making indie devs port their stuff to Linux, close to none of the big publishers did.

I am aware of the fact that the binaries doesn't match, but its still half of the coding done if you can reuse big chunks. Well, someone got to start somewhere if we truly want to make Linux a decent gaming platform.

 

[sunweb]

Yeah, clearing some things would be great.
What i get from the news. You have SteamOS that streams your game from another PC that has installed Windows/Mac. Thats not really helpful or game changing. I thought they'll make some SDK or some special offering to lure out big companies for making native Linux games.

 

[bpgt64]

The only thing we have to worry about is when games start becoming Steam OS exclusive.

 

[Mathragh]

While steam is basically a DRM'd app store for games like iTunes (expanding its offerins to general software), the Steam OS will be whatever Linux distro they choose to use with Big Picture slapped on it. The OS itself won't be locked out to competition. I only hope that they are using a core distro such as Fedora or Debian and not Ubuntu etc.

Got any sources?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Right now Steam can't run in the windows store API. Gabe made a bunch of comments about this around the release of win 8. So this OS should protect them from Windows 9 if MS decides to only let it use windows-api approved apps.

Also giving game devs a free OS to work with should help a lot of smaller companies. Good move by Mr. Newell

No, bad move. If Valve abandons Windows, most of their game library becomes useless.

The only thing we have to worry about is when games start becoming Steam OS exclusive.

I wouldn't worry about that at all. Like Linux, Steam OS will have a tiny marketshare. Most developers will support Windows first and everything else second.

As long as the games are running on OpenCL I think it will be relatively easy to port them to Linux I think. Windows is going to be in trouble when gaming goes to Linux en mase, it may (or may not) signify the start of many people getting comfortable with something "foreign".

It's DirectX that is difficult to port.

 

[Ravenas]

You get a special TF3 hat for replacing your Windows installation with Steam OS. Your argument is invalid.

Awesome post.