Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

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Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby Bluecast » Wed Sep 25, 2013 7:34 pm

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/09/25/st ... eam-boxes/

This morning, Valve finally made their long-awaited Steam box announcement, although details at this point in time are sketchy at best. Here’s what we do know, though.



Valve are working with “multiple partners” to bring a range of Steam gaming machines to market in 2014, all of them running the company’s recently announced SteamOS operating system. While these products are currently in development, Valve intend to let people try them out and make changes based on user feedback.



As such, they’ve designed a “high-performance prototype” that is optimized for Steam gaming in the living room. This year, the company will ship 300 of these prototype machines to Steam users, free of charge, for beta testing. Valve say that the games available to these machines will consist of the nearly 3,000 games available on Steam—which will be playable via streaming from your PC, since SteamOS is Linux-based, not Windows—in addition to games that can run natively on the system.



While Valve have not yet provided hardware specs for their prototype, they say they’ll share more information on this front soon. Ultimately, however, they say that there will be several SteamOS machines to choose from, all with a range of specifications, price and performance. While Valve’s prototype machine is focused on users that want the most control over their hardware, other machines will optimize for things like price, quietness and other factors.



Keeping in line with their intent to allow user control over the hardware, Valve say you’ll be able to “hack” these boxes, run other operating systems on them, and even change the hardware. Eventually, you’ll also be able to download the SteamOS operating system itself, along with the source code.



You can read further details on Valve’s prototype Steam-powered machine on this page, along with details of how to enter the beta for the prototype hardware.

Read more stories about PC & Steambox & Valve on Siliconera.

Read more at http://www.siliconera.com/2013/09/25/st ... KXXXq6s.99


Fail to see why this is needed if you have a PC...unless it's a crappy one
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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby Kaven » Wed Sep 25, 2013 9:55 pm

At the moment it appears you need a PC to 'stream' Windows based games to the Steambox, which defeats some of the purpose. But if they can start porting the Steam library to run stand-alone on it, they may be on to something. For the first time in decades, maybe you'll be able to ditch Windows and still do PC gaming.

I really dislike the Windows 8 UI and like all its predecessors, it's still a bloated resource hog. I'd like to move away from Microsoft OS, and I know a lot of people who feel the same way but still need Windows to run games and other applications.

It's too soon to pass judgement (no pricing or specs yet) but I think it's promising.
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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby Raithos » Wed Sep 25, 2013 11:22 pm

Kaven wrote: At the moment it appears you need a PC to 'stream' Windows based games to the Steambox, which defeats some of the purpose. But if they can start porting the Steam library to run stand-alone on it, they may be on to something. For the first time in decades, maybe you'll be able to ditch Windows and still do PC gaming.

I really dislike the Windows 8 UI and like all its predecessors, it's still a bloated resource hog. I'd like to move away from Microsoft OS, and I know a lot of people who feel the same way but still need Windows to run games and other applications.

It's too soon to pass judgement (no pricing or specs yet) but I think it's promising.


Nah, windows 7 uses about 10% of the systems resources (unless its a very low spec laptop or something). Same as the consoles, just sitting on the dashboard or XMB screen you are using around the same if not more because they are basically super low spec PC's with their own OS built in. I mean I stream music while I play BF3 and might have something downloading and never go above 35% of all resources being used (except GPU of course). Windows is still a pain just pointing that out. I mean isn't the ps4 said to have 8gb of ram, but 3.5 of that is dedicated to the OS right? That's almost 50%. I wish we didn't have to deal with Windows, but it's the backbone of almost every PC game out there. And is light years ahead of all other options, for now at least.

Best thing for people to do, is build a real pc. Something mid range, and set it next to their TV and hook it up with VGA/HDMI. they would be able to play games sitting on their couch, and still use it as a PC too. I do agree windows 8 is horrible though. I've never seen such a mess. It's almost worse than Windows ME was. When I build for people, I do my best to stress to them newest isn't always the best, to stay clear of windows 8.

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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby MiTT3NZ » Wed Sep 25, 2013 11:27 pm

Yeah, my general rule is that if a PC has a CPU under 3GHz and less than 4GB RAM, you use Windows XP. anything above, use 7. I'll never put W8 on my PC, but I'd defo be interested in their laptop/tablet hybrids.
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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby Bluecast » Wed Sep 25, 2013 11:59 pm

Use Win7 Asus G75 Nvidia 660m so that's a little old now in terms of a GPU but uses I7 quad core and 16gb of ram. Not used really any real taxing games but been playing a few on steam in full 1080p and they run flawless. So far had everything at max in the games I played. Portal is a few years old and Serious Sam is just a cleaned up early 2000's games. Trine 2 however still seemed to have no trouble. So for me Steam is fine on the PC and tried using OS but it feels a lot like Windows Media Center just with steam instead. I can see that on a set top box but not a PC. I mean if I wanted to culd use HDMI to my TV or if I had a Apple display Thunderbolt. Just use a HP monitor with VGA.

Oh and yeah couple PC's ago I put in 4GB of ram on a XP machine..this is in 2009 and XP only would recognize 3. Win7 Home can see up to 16 and Win 7 pro I think can see 192 but that's for servers and such. Win8 think it's 32gb. Even see a lot of PC gaming builds still only putting 8 GB of ram. You can maybe get away with quite a few game on steam with just 4GB but don't expect to play Battlefield or something. At the least for gaming with steam use 6 and up to get more out of steam games. As for Win8, it is the new Vista.
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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby MiTT3NZ » Thu Sep 26, 2013 12:04 am

The harnessing of RAM issue is down to 32-bit vs 64-bit architecture, really, which is why 64-bit machines are really being pushed at the moment in order to move past current limitations. I'm also of the belief that using Win7 on a 32-bit machine is essentially pointless.
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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby Bluecast » Thu Sep 26, 2013 12:15 am

lI didn't even know there is 32bit Win 7 machines. TBH I had no idea anyone still used 32 bit...outside the few still using Vista or XP. Sheesh
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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby MiTT3NZ » Thu Sep 26, 2013 12:26 am

Most people nowadays don't use PCs, so their dusty towers that get brought out when their laptop or tablet's on the blink are usually malware-riddled XP-SP2s with MSN on auto-start.

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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby Bluecast » Thu Sep 26, 2013 12:33 am

SP2? Seriously?! Holy shit that's like 2003. SP3 came out in 2008 or 2009. How do people not update?
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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby MiTT3NZ » Thu Sep 26, 2013 12:55 am

Because 2008 was when everyone started getting laptops and Macs.
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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby Thief » Thu Sep 26, 2013 1:50 am

Yup, in 2008 I got a Mac laptop :P
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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby Axm » Thu Sep 26, 2013 1:05 pm

I guess its a good alternative for existing PC gamers but I cant see this taking off outside of that. If it does then we'll have quite a mess of consoles on our hands.
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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby Raithos » Thu Sep 26, 2013 3:43 pm

MiTT3NZ wrote: Most people nowadays don't use PCs, so their dusty towers that get brought out when their laptop or tablet's on the blink are usually malware-riddled XP-SP2s with MSN on auto-start.


That is so true lol
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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby Bluecast » Thu Sep 26, 2013 3:52 pm

Could never go back to a desktop. Plus don't have the room. Use my Laptop with a monitor and extra keyboard as a desktop but at ties to like to lug this 10 pound laptop around.
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Re: Steam Boxes using Steam OS announced

Postby Raithos » Thu Sep 26, 2013 3:55 pm

Axm wrote: I guess its a good alternative for existing PC gamers but I cant see this taking off outside of that. If it does then we'll have quite a mess of consoles on our hands.


I honestly don't think many current PC gamers would go for this. I mean if you already have a PC capable of playing the games you want, Steams Big Picture mode and game pad support are already there. VGA/HDMI to the TV and you're all set. But if it was 1-2 years ago, it would have definitely made sense to a lot of console exclusive gamers who wanted an easy way to have access to PC only games. But not now with the launch of next gen consoles and the indie scene starting to explode on PSN I doubt it.

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