Steam Box

[mestevo]

It appears on Monday we'll get an announcement (or 3) related to Valve's living room presence. My question is, what would you want out of a Valve product that would get you to buy or use it? Is there anything they could do to get you to replace buying other consoles or devices? What are you hoping/wanting form these announcements?

I've heading into some meetings and stuff today so I'll reply to my own questions in a little bit.

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/

Update 9/23: SteamOS
- In-home streaming of all of your games to a linux-based OS
- Family options to pare down your collection where appropriate
- Family sharing
- Music, Movie, TV services in the works

Steam is coming to a new operating system
As we’ve been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we’ve come to the conclusion that the
environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself.
SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen.
It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

Next Update: 9/25 at 10am PST

[mgoblue]

Re: Steam Box

Interested in what they have, but doubt I'd buy soon.

[Sandman42]

Re: Steam Box

Interested in what they have, but doubt I'd buy soon.

Same here. Definitely interested to see if they come become a bigger competitor to Sony and Microsoft in terms of appealing to the masses.

Already have a gaming PC though that I can run HDMI to my TV so I'd be more likely to buy a PS4 rather than the Steam Box.

[LingeringRegime]

Re: Steam Box

I am definitely interested in what they have to offer. If they will allow the PS4 controller to be used with their box I will must assuredly get one eventually.

[SinisterAlex]

Re: Steam Box

3 days
3 announcements.


Half Lif..... forget it.

[ghettogeeksta]

Re: Steam Box

I'm interested to see what they have in store also. I hope it's what I think it is, basically a more powerful next-gen gaming console/gaming rig with a simplified OS. Something more powerful than the PS4 and XboxONE but not as powerful as the top notch graphics cards, maybe something on the same level as a GTX 600 series.

The only problem is what games will be available for it, I'm assuming the entire Steam library will be available for this device?

[mestevo]

Re: Steam Box

My hopes from this set of announcements... another vision of NVIDIA's Shield product.

Steam hardware meant to act as a streamer to any TV in the household that has a dongle attached to it. Buy more dongles, you are streaming your PC to any TV in the house (see also: Chromecast, Vita TV). Press a button on a supported controller (including PS4, which would be great for this use w/ it's mousepad-like touchpad) any sync to the nearest dongle (traditional syncing also possible of course). Supported video cards could do this now, just need to buy the dongle, but Valve with this initial volley will have some bundles/packs supplied by hardware partners to help people get going with this solution.

Break this technology into 3 parts... hardware, dongle, and an enhancement to Steam further supporting big picture mode and you have the 3 pending announcements for next week. If they go further with the hardware then maybe the announcement could be controller, console, and dongle.

PC gaming isn't dying, neither is console gaming (and neither are killing each other, their mutual threat is mobile eroding market share and ROI) so the answer is to combine forces w/ consoles and own the living room. They'll both always be around to a degree, so any path that tries to pretend that it is dominant and anything other than complimentary is a mistake IMO.

I had some of this explained better in my head but much of it didn't come out as clear as I wanted, hopefully I made my point well enough.

Oh, and if it's anything other than this... well I've got a PC gaming rig, and it's hard to see them bringing out a product with the compatibility of windows (since it's expected to be linux-based) and at a price attractive enough to enthusiasts to run high end games. I'd be interested in something like the above solution I described. Some linux-based gaming OS? Not so much.

[mestevo]

Re: Steam Box

I'm interested to see what they have in store also. I hope it's what I think it is, basically a more powerful next-gen gaming console/gaming rig with a simplified OS. Something more powerful than the PS4 and XboxONE but not as powerful as the top notch graphics cards, maybe something on the same level as a GTX 600 series.

The only problem is what games will be available for it, I'm assuming the entire Steam library will be available for this device?

If it's Linux-based as has been widely anticipated to be (a Windows option debatable, depends on their approach) then I believe only a couple hundred Steam games are compatible. I own more games than that.

[ghettogeeksta]

Re: Steam Box

My hopes from this set of announcements... another vision of NVIDIA's Shield product.

Steam hardware meant to act as a streamer to any TV in the household that has a dongle attached to it. Buy more dongles, you are streaming your PC to any TV in the house (see also: Chromecast, Vita TV). Press a button on a supported controller (including PS4, which would be great for this use w/ it's mousepad-like touchpad) any sync to the nearest dongle (traditional syncing also possible of course). Supported video cards could do this now, just need to buy the dongle, but Valve with this initial volley will have some bundles/packs supplied by hardware partners to help people get going with this solution.

Break this technology into 3 parts... hardware, dongle, and an enhancement to Steam further supporting big picture mode and you have the 3 pending announcements for next week. If they go further with the hardware then maybe the announcement could be controller, console, and dongle.

PC gaming isn't dying, neither is console gaming (and neither are killing each other, their mutual threat is mobile eroding market share and ROI) so the answer is to combine forces w/ consoles and own the living room. They'll both always be around to a degree, so any path that tries to pretend that it is dominant and anything other than complimentary is a mistake IMO.

I had some of this explained better in my head but much of it didn't come out as clear as I wanted, hopefully I made my point well enough.

Oh, and if it's anything other than this... well I've got a PC gaming rig, and it's hard to see them bringing out a product with the compatibility of windows (since it's expected to be linux-based) and at a price attractive enough to enthusiasts to run high end games. I'd be interested in something like the above solution I described. Some linux-based gaming OS? Not so much.

Wep we know that you won't need to buy a separate monitor for it, Im pretty confident it's going to use Big Picture.

[mgoblue]

Re: Steam Box

My hopes from this set of announcements... another vision of NVIDIA's Shield product.

Steam hardware meant to act as a streamer to any TV in the household that has a dongle attached to it. Buy more dongles, you are streaming your PC to any TV in the house (see also: Chromecast, Vita TV). Press a button on a supported controller (including PS4, which would be great for this use w/ it's mousepad-like touchpad) any sync to the nearest dongle (traditional syncing also possible of course). Supported video cards could do this now, just need to buy the dongle, but Valve with this initial volley will have some bundles/packs supplied by hardware partners to help people get going with this solution.

Break this technology into 3 parts... hardware, dongle, and an enhancement to Steam further supporting big picture mode and you have the 3 pending announcements for next week. If they go further with the hardware then maybe the announcement could be controller, console, and dongle.

PC gaming isn't dying, neither is console gaming (and neither are killing each other, their mutual threat is mobile eroding market share and ROI) so the answer is to combine forces w/ consoles and own the living room. They'll both always be around to a degree, so any path that tries to pretend that it is dominant and anything other than complimentary is a mistake IMO.

I had some of this explained better in my head but much of it didn't come out as clear as I wanted, hopefully I made my point well enough.

Oh, and if it's anything other than this... well I've got a PC gaming rig, and it's hard to see them bringing out a product with the compatibility of windows (since it's expected to be linux-based) and at a price attractive enough to enthusiasts to run high end games. I'd be interested in something like the above solution I described. Some linux-based gaming OS? Not so much.

I would like a Steam Dongle type thing that transmits my game to another tv....

Be cool to play in different rooms with relatively no lag. I'd even set up wireless controllers somehow if that helped.

When is the reveal today?

[trobinson97]

Re: Steam Box

I would like a Steam Dongle type thing that transmits my game to another tv....

Be cool to play in different rooms with relatively no lag. I'd even set up wireless controllers somehow if that helped.

When is the reveal today?

In about 20 minutes according to the timer here.

[mestevo]

Re: Steam Box

SteamOS

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

Updated the OP.

Update 9/23: SteamOS
- In-home streaming of all of your games to a linux-based OS
- Family options to pare down your collection where appropriate
- Family sharing
- Music, Movie, TV services in the works

Steam is coming to a new operating system
As we’ve been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we’ve come to the conclusion that the
environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself.
SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen.
It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

Next Update: 9/25 at 10am PST

[ubernoob]

Re: Steam Box

Was just coming here to post that. Pretty crazy.

If the Movie and TV Services are up to par (Not necessarily expecting XBMC-level customization, but if the basic functionality is there) I will be building a nice HTPC and NAS server for this.

I'm too lazy to do it now for XBMC. The only thing that would be icing on the cake (and I expect it to happen at some point) is if the community gets support for emulators working.

I can picture withering away on my couch as I flip through terabytes upon terabytes upon terabytes of HD-quality movies/TV while getting a game in between episodes. Oh, and if I want to play one of the hundreds of amazing classic games from the older consoles? Done. I'm sold.

[mgoblue]

Re: Steam Box

SteamOS

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

Updated the OP.

Update 9/23: SteamOS
- In-home streaming of all of your games to a linux-based OS
- Family options to pare down your collection where appropriate
- Family sharing
- Music, Movie, TV services in the works

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

Next Update: 9/25 at 10am PST

It would be cool if they had a fairly cheap streaming Steam box that was more portable. Similar in theory to Vita TV that Sony's coming out with.

I wouldn't need to install all the games on the box, just be beefy enough to be able to stream with really good quality and limited lag.

I would be into that I think. However, I'm not paying console level prices for a higher end Steam box that runs Linux. In that case I would just build a beefy Windows box.

We'll see what the week holds for us.

[ghettogeeksta]

Re: Steam Box

A stand-a-lone OS, any living room device. Im assuming this means games will be streaming from the cloud to your TV, smart phone/tablet ala OnLive. OnLive isn't exactly mainstream/popular, what makes Valve think they can do better? This is the future of gaming didn't think it would come this soon though. The only problem with this will be the lack of AAA games that will appear on home consoles, which means this service won't replace home consoles.