The Steam Universe is Expanding in 2014

BobbyDigi

"Livingroom"

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

Last year, we shipped a software feature called Big Picture, a user-interface tailored for televisions and gamepads.
This year we’ve been working on even more ways to connect the dots for customers who want Steam in the living-room.
Soon, we’ll be adding you to our design process, so that you can help us shape the future of Steam.

Canti

Intriguing. I have to wonder if this might be related to the rumored "Steambox".

Creeperbane2

Canti said:

Intriguing. I have to wonder if this might be related to the rumored "Steambox".

If so, then let the race begin to create the first steampun steambox case mod!

ardichoke

43 minutes.... My body is ready.

EDIT: SteamOS is now a thing. I am unsurprised and genuinely excited. I really REALLY want the In-Home Streaming feature to work well. I'd love to be able to play my entire Windows library on a lightweight, Linux powered box connected to my TV.

_k

Steam OS.

UPSLynx

I don't actually know what to think about Steam OS yet. Big Picture mode as it is is cool but I've never even used it, despite my bigscreen TV sitting beside my PC only a couple feet away. Too much of a hassle when I can just sit at my PC and play.

Thing is though, having rendering handled on your main PC and pipe the video/audio to your TV if you have a steam box is rad, and way better than the previous example of NVIDIA's Shield (forget mobile). That in itself could be very cool. But I still feel like I'll just end up using my PC. One of the reasons I don't really console game is that I'm not really comfortable sitting in front of a TV holding a controller, and I'm spoiled by all the extra control I get from a PC - be it VOIP chat functions, the ability to record/stream gameplay, quick alt+tabbing out to read news and whatnot during downtime... So it's a tough call.

Furthermore, it bugs me that Valve is still a very small studio (less than 400) and they're putting so much attention to software/platform development. Something like Steam OS will require a large team to work on it constantly for years. That's great for steam and the OS, but it's not good for anyone hoping Valve will ever make a game with the number 3 in the title.

MiracleManS

UPSLynx said:

Furthermore, it bugs me that Valve is still a very small studio (less than 400) and they're putting so much attention to software/platform development. Something like Steam OS will require a large team to work on it constantly for years. That's great for steam and the OS, but it's not good for anyone hoping Valve will ever make a game with the number 3 in the title.

I think it's safe to say that whatever team is working on SteamOS isn't working on video games. There's going to be some crossover, but I have my doubts that it's going to have that large of an impact on the potential for any game ending in 3.

mertesn

UPSLynx said:

Furthermore, it bugs me that Valve is still a very small studio (less than 400) and they're putting so much attention to software/platform development. Something like Steam OS will require a large team to work on it constantly for years. That's great for steam and the OS, but it's not good for anyone hoping Valve will ever make a game with the number 3 in the title.

Sales through Steam probably brings in way more money for Valve than all the games they've developed combined.

ardichoke

MiracleManS said:

UPSLynx said:

Furthermore, it bugs me that Valve is still a very small studio (less than 400) and they're putting so much attention to software/platform development. Something like Steam OS will require a large team to work on it constantly for years. That's great for steam and the OS, but it's not good for anyone hoping Valve will ever make a game with the number 3 in the title.

I think it's safe to say that whatever team is working on SteamOS isn't working on video games. There's going to be some crossover, but I have my doubts that it's going to have that large of an impact on the potential for any game ending in 3.

Also, considering how closely they've been working with Canonical, I'm willing to bet that most of the heavy lifting is being done by Canonical and the open source community. Valve is probably just putting their own UI layer over top of it, which is not nearly as resource intensive as developing the whole thing.

UPSLynx

@mertesn @miraclemans I do not deny how much money steam brings in for the company, and how important that platform is for the company. But we know how Valve works now with all the information that's come out of the last couple of years. Flat hierarchy where employees decide what to work on. Steam is obviously the company's top drive, and they're going to devote resources towards it to support, especially if they're building an OS. The company is less interested in game development with every passing year, and with the massive successes of Steam (and how important it is to PC gamers), it's obvious that they'll continue to work on that.

@ardichoke I wasn't aware they were working with a partner for the OS, but if that is true, it would alleviate some of my concern for sure.

I'm not knocking Steam OS. It'll be a massive boost to Steam and will truly enable PC Gaming to be the absolute best gaming experience in all scenarios. I just doubt I'll use it much, that's all. It shows how Valve are evolving as a company.

Thrax

I imagine this is more to enable the fabled steamboxes. A downloadable build is just a happy byproduct for people that care.

midga

I'm mostly interested to see how the streaming is implemented. They say "all" games. I am somewhat dubious.

AlexDeGruven

I'm exceedingly interested in the streaming part of it. My HTPC is plenty powerful enough to stream the content, but not nearly powerful enough to actually play many of the games I have.

Being able to make my desktop do the heavy lifting while the steambox/steamOS build just pulls the video is very interesting.

@midga - My guess is that the regular Steam client will have some API hooks added soon that SteamOS and the SteamBox will be able to attach to for streaming anything you've got in your library.

UPSLynx

Yeah, I wonder about the streaming as well, definitely the most exciting bit of it all. @midga raises an excellent point - I have a feeling they'll enforce a minimum spec requirement for that feature.

NVIDIA SHIELD is the same deal - they know that if your PC sucks, your SHIELD experience will suck. That's why they require a certain level of GeForce cards to use. Steam OS will probably need such a benchmark.

ardichoke

UPSLynx said:

@ardichoke I wasn't aware they were working with a partner for the OS, but if that is true, it would alleviate some of my concern for sure.

I don't know how deeply they're working with Canonical, but I know they are working with them at some level. That's why Ubuntu is the only "officially supported" platform for Steam on Linux. Also, I know they've provided a number of patches to various upstreams for Linux (the kernel, driver vendors, Canonical, etc.)

primesuspect

I imagine that SteamOS is basically a heavily compartmentalized and wrapped Ubuntu.

Cliff_Forster

I have complete faith that whatever it is, it will be awesome. Valve has the Midas touch. A piece of hardware that streams my Steam content to the TV set with a standard dual stick controller? Sign me up, I won't play shooters that way, but fighting games, racing games, casual arcade stuff, hell yes.

fatcat

Room mate A has a steam account
Room mate B has his own steam account

can room mate A&B use one steambox in living room to play on each's account multiplayer?

BobbyDigi

Day 1: O
Day 2: [O ]
Day 3: O + O

We know day 1 is Steam OS. The thought is that Day two is Steam Box and day 3 will be what fatcat stated above.

primesuspect

None of which is Half Life 3.

/me storms out

Tushon

primesuspect said:

None of which is Half Life 3.

/me storms out

Your response was three lines.
The action statement had three lines.
This is the third line, therefore: HL3 confirmed.

BobbyDigi

Many jokes are floating around that the day two announcements will be SteamBox and then we will indefinitely wait for announcement number 3.

primesuspect

And we've just unveiled a bug in Vanilla Reactions.

Tushon

literally reporting it right now.

Linc

fyi, that's a glitch in /me parsing, not Reactions.

CB

Lincoln said:

that's a glitch in /me parsing

#twss

NiGHTS

Industry guys, what % of games use directx? Are you seeing a ramping up of openGL use/support due to potential console ports in this upcoming generation?

Hasn't this been Linux's past crutch with gaming?

PirateNinja

@NiGHTS
I'm not qualified to answer this but that was my first thought as well.
These were my thoughts that came after which don't provide any conclusive anything:
- Many lower level games are more easily ported or written to work on any platform. Side scrollers, puzzle games, etc. Those are really the good games for controllers and big TVs anyway
- Valve and id have the talent and experience to do OpenGL right. If OpenGL/Linux gaming takes off they have a slight edge
- DirectX has always been in my mind Microsoft's saving grace
- Companies probably haven't wanted to support Linux because of it's small market share and diversity
- Creating a fresh OS that creates consistency among end users and integrates an app store (Steam) is the first step in overcoming the two challenges above
- Providing your OS to third party hardware devs, for free, has the potential to create an awesome new nich computer market
- If Valve has success with the SteamBox I would expect to see Asus/Gigabyte/etc offering up SteamOS devices in the very near future
- This is essentially an "Open Console" that isn't remade every 5 years, but evolves in the same way that PCs have

Finally
- The minute there is a special hat/achievement for using SteamOS I'm installing it along with 5million other people

ardichoke

The minute I have some free cash, I'm going to build a SteamOS box for my living room.... unless the official Steam Box is reasonably priced, in which case I'll just buy one of those. I am so excited about being able to play my whole ricockulous Steam library on my TV. There are certain games that I bought on a whim (or in a bundle) that I tried playing and thought "Gee, this really would be better with a controller on a TV" and never played again... I'm looking at you Rogue Legacy and A.R.E.S.

Linc

The only thing I care about: Can I then buy Castle Crashers on Steam and then play it with 3 other people on my TV? If yes, win.

Tushon

Lincoln said:

The only thing I care about: Can I then buy Castle Crashers on Steam and then play it with 3 other people on my TV? If yes, win.

It will be critical for them to nail stuff like this.