Continuing Valve’s strip poker-like teasing and gradual unveiling this week, we have a logical follow up to Monday’s announcement of Steam OS – Steam Machines. After all, what use is software without hardware to run it on?
Stating that “entertainment is not a one-size-fits-all world”, Valve have announced their collaboration with third parties to create gaming machines specifically designed to run SteamOS.
As part of an FAQ, they reveal their ambitions for SteamOS machines to be released in 2014, seemingly from standard PC parts, but tuned towards Valve’s guidelines and operating system. You will still be able to make your own SteamOS machine, and even with Steam Machine hardware, you’ll be able to install secondary operating systems or upgrade parts down the line, should you so choose.
It’s unclear whether Valve are going to launch a first party hardware system themselves, and the hardware they’re announcing today could merely be a template for their internal development and for third party developers and manufacturers to work from.
“We’re conducting a beta of the overall Steam living-room experience, so we needed to build prototype hardware on which to run tests,” explains the FAQ. “At Valve we always rely on real-world testing as part of our design process. The specific machine we’re testing is designed for users who want the most control possible over their hardware. Other boxes will optimize for size, price, quietness, or other factors.”
However, for Valve to get this base hardware right (in either case), they’re opening things up to a tiny 300-person beta test to start this year.
In order to put yourself forward for this opportunity, you need to do the following, as part of a Hardware Beta Eligibility Quest:
- Join the Steam Universe community group
- Agree to the Steam Hardware Beta Terms and Conditions
- Make 10 Steam friends (if you haven’t already)
- Create a public Steam Community profile (if you haven’t already)
- Play a game using a gamepad in Big Picture mode
I’m sure that many of you will be disappointed that Valve haven’t unveiled a final product, let alone given clear specifics on the matter, but their intentions are quite clear, to push PC gaming into a living room friendly form in a unified and industry-wide push.
They cap things off by saying, “Stay tuned, though – we have some more to say very soon on the topic of input.”
There’s a new countdown set for 6PM on Friday…
Source: Steam
gazzagb
It’s kinda disappointing that there’s no solid details or a proper hardware reveal but this could be really interesting. Having multiple Steamboxes with ‘basic’ ones could directly affect the console market would be great.
I also now see the value in Steam OS, rather than having to buy hardware again (such as a Steambox), I could get a lightweight system to hook up to my TV just to stream games. I’m sure it has a larger potential than that, but at first I completely wrote it off. Hopefully by the time it’s released next year, far more games will have Linux support.
Stefan L
This guy. He gets it.
gazzagb
Yay!
blarty
Yeah the streaming is key, although I suspect that there will be a number of titles that won’t support it, like Fallout 3 etc, probably those with third party launchers like uPlay, GFWL, etc
Avenger
It could be about a simple display program made by Valve so that a display can be streamed over.
On the other hand we could see Steam only games capable of being streamed.
blarty
Possibly as part of their standard steam overlay
blarty
I’ve signed up for the beta.
My two biggest concerns about SteamOS have been addressed by the SteamMachine announcement
1) source available for the OS, which reduces the likelihood that logging into the machine itself will be dependent upon the state of your steam account
2) you can replace the OS should you wish to.
Happy days
quinkill
Broadening the home console competition is a good thing for gamers ultimately. I’m glad to hear this is happening but probably won’t invest in a SteamBox for a year or two to see how things pan out.
colmshan1990
Sigh…
I think Valve have misstepped with these.
Those aren’t consoles, they’re small PCs.
Valve talks about the ability to upgrade (read: need to after a few years), and different models running different specs…
Every problem (for average consumers, I recognise that these are advantages for PC gamers) the PC market already has for reaching ‘casual’ gamers who prefer consoles encapsulated in this series of Steam Machines.
On top of that, Gamestop and the likes aren’t about to drop everything and start selling machines which connect straight to Steam, stopping themselves from selling games to consumers too. And even bargains like the Steam sales aren’t alone in offering stunning value to gamers anymore- see the likes of PS+ for that.
All that negative stuff said, these could be great little gizmos. They have the potential to revolutionise ‘console’ gaming, and could hopefully offer a lot of power for a little pricetag. And I have signed up for the beta (of course.
Looking forward to seeing Valve’s idea of the ideal controller now come Friday. I’d love to see something unique, a standard controller with some kind of twist.
blarty
To be honest, I don’t think Valve gives two hoots about GameStop….. They’ll be looking at the likes of Dell, Acer, and HP, which have seen their PC unit sales go through year on year decline, and with an OS that is free introduces a price reduction to the consumer at little reduction in margin to the manufacturers, hopefully reducing the cost of Windows with it at some point. Or the manufacturers can put an £80 dedicated card in and not have to raise the list price considerably.
colmshan1990
Surely this is about expanding Steam’s market share?
For that, they’re going to need retailers.
KeRaSh
The marketshare expansion argument. I’ve said this on GAF a few days ago but I don’t really see Steam OS or their new hardware expanding their marketshare.
They already have every PC gamer on board and I don’t see the console crowd suddenly jumping ship because of this.
Fact is, non PC gamers would need to buy new hardware and depending on the pricing, it could be in the area of a self built PC with a Windows license. Steam OS might be a little more efficient if games are optimized for it but you also lose a lot of software flexibility that comes with Windows.
In my opinion this is targeted at existing Steam users. Valve wants to lock people into their store ecosystem even further to avoid any trouble Microsoft could cause somewhere down the line.
It’s kind of stupid that they haven’t talked about hardware specifict but they are hinting at a new input method for Friday? Sounds interesting. Hopefully it’s something actually innovitive and not just a Xbox 360 controller clone with open drivers.
plutoniumdragon
@KeRaSh I’m quite happy with my F710, PS3 layout and quality (well almost) and Xbox360 drivers and compatibility. I’m not interested in another layout or controller, unless it offers something both unique and actually useful.
KeRaSh
Sorry if it wasn’t clear but that’s what I actually meant. I don’t want just another controller that does nothing new. I have controllers for my PC already. If they managed to push the envelope of PC controllers then I’m interested.
Tuffcub
So the Steambox is, uhm, a PC? The hardware that is suffering the biggest decline it has ever had in it’s history? (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23251285)
Clever that they are not taking any financial risks themselves though, free OS, getting others to do the hardware. I bet their charging them to slap the words “Steam” on the PCs though.
I note that the beta offers ” high-performance ” machines. So when these do become available they aint gonna be cheap.
KeRaSh
Pricing will play a huge role in this.
There are already console like gaming PCs (Alienware X51 series?) but they are pretty ecpensive and I don’t see people suddenly rushing to PC gaming if the price of admission (hardware) stays as high as it is today.
It’ll be interesting to see if the lack of a Windows license actually makes a dent in the pricing. That prototype Steam Box that some company kickstarted and showed off at some computer expo had a hefty price tag attached to it and that will definitely be a deciding factor with a new console generation launching this year.
plutoniumdragon
The way things are going for the next gen consoles, weedly little CPU with most of the power on the GPU is the ideal way to build a cheap PC. Yet to see the real-world power of the next consoles, of course, but it shouldn’t be that difficult to build a PC to match at about the same price point. Especially in volume.
Then the real genius would be marketing it with cheaper games and more flexibility…
TSBonyman
Is it just me or have these announcements been a little underwhelming so far. I guess it’ll be more interesting when they have something more concrete to reveal.
skibadee
I was hoping for a HL3 on PS4 announcement.
HunterGatherer
By making any configuration run stream os, they lose the key console advantage that allows consoles to fight above their hardware specs.
This is what makes a mid range console hardware spec out perform a high end pc spec, simply because there is a fixed configuration to target in software
plutoniumdragon
While a valid point, the games will presumably be optimised for the SteamOS so it depends how well this itself is optimised for the hardware.
If Steam produce a list of “approved” components for building said box then this *could* work just as well as a console…
Bilbo_bobbins
why should I spend money on a steam box, when I can buy a PC and play any game I want? What’s the difference here, sorry I have no idea as I don’t use PC/Steam for gaming?
TheDemocrodile
I’m pretty sure that this isn’t aimed at people who dont PC game this all feels like a way to suck existing PC gamers further into the Valve ecosystem.
However a SteamMachine should remove one of the oldest problems that PC gamers and prospective PC gamers have faced since time immemorial which is ” Will this game run on my rig”, a SteamBox i assume, will be powerful enough for you to not have to worry about “specs” for years in the same way that my 2009 Alienware laptop can still tackle recent games like Rome 2 Total War.
However my machine cost £800……Second hand.
Are you likely to want to spend upwards of £600 on any machine? Even one that guarantees you access to the greatest games ever made? Even one which would run games at settings that consoles can only cry about?
Difficult choice.
Severn2j
The point of this is not to appeal to the console gamers to suddenly adopt PC gaming, its about removing PC gamers dependence on Windows. PC games are predominately, designed to run on Windows and with the way MS has been changing things lately (specifically where its going with Windows8), it has made a lot of PC developers nervous, particularly Valve. SteamOS is an attempt to remove MS from the equation, and as I (and I’m sure others) only use Windows for PC gaming (and would much rather use Linux for everything else), I think this is a great idea.
I also think MS should be very worried about this.