Valve announces SteamOS

[Jeneki]

Please do tell about the $1K video card. Plebs want to know.

You know you want it.

 

[not sonic]

 

[mr_b]

The controller is so weird that I want to try it out and see. At least this is the first tangible thing they've shown. Can't see how this is going to jive with a lot of the indie games steam has. Definitely questionable but at least its the most concrete thing they've announced so far.

 

[greedostick]

I for one am very interested in the developments. So if anyone else is, friend me on steam. I'm jforrest1980.

As for a Steam Box there will definitely be positives and negatives. I would imagine if this thing ran windows virus's would be a major issue. But running Linux will limit the amount of games you can play. A lot of people out there like myself play a lot of games on steam, but a lot of games steam doesn't support. So you will need a PC anyway to play all PC games. Now if somehow they could make it so you could still play any MMO, or Blizzard game then I think it would succeed.

Also, if you read through the steam forums a lot of people buy games that don't work on their PC's or Mac or Linux system. A steam box would be nice since I would assume it would guarantee any game purchased on steam would work. A lot of people simply are not PC gamers because they are not good at working a PC and don't want to deal with compatibility issues.

A bad thing would be the controller. I doubt it will be as good as the 360 controller, and if you can't use a 360 controller on a steam box a lot of people will be very disappointed.

The pricing point will be an issue I assume. If people are buying a home console they are going to want a home console price. Paying a price to buy the cheapest steam box I would think will not allow access to the newest games as you will need the best steam box. I can't see paying over $400.00 for a console that will not allow access to all the games. Although, if it did take off I think it would be nice to buy a box now, and a few years down the road when you buy a new model not having to worry about games not being backwards compatible, which is a huge issue for me with consoles.

Those are just my opinions and speculations. Some of the issues I have mentioned may have already been addressed.

I have a feeling that steam boxes will be in the same boat as buying an alienware. Expensive. I can see the websites now, get your custom steam box for only $2200.

 

[SNKorSWM]

I remember that kind of controller. Growlanser Generations, released by the now defunct Working Designs, had an option where you have to press both Up and Down at the same time to trigger. No normal controllers would work.

 

[OrochiEddie]

ummmm...

I mean, I guess I'd be interested in trying it, and I also suppose it is cool that a company is trying to do something new with a game controller, but I am baffled as to how that thing works

 

[scrubsy]

I like how Valve has just said fuck you to game development and is just happy raking in their hat money from TF2. At this point HL3 has hit Duke Nukem Forever status where there has been too much time between releases and so much hype that when it does come out it will be total shit.

 

[Lemony Vengeance]

At this point HL3 has hit Duke Nukem Forever status where there has been too much time between releases and so much hype that when it does come out it will be total shit.

didn't I say that a few pages back.. ?

 

[NeoSneth]

No One has promised HL3. It cant be 'vaoprware' if it wasn't ever 'ware'.

I dont know what their aiming at with any of this shiz. Gabe came from the early days of Microsoft though, so I guess OS is in his blood.

 

[greedostick]

i'm also curious about Half Life Black Mesa. Last I heard it was approved on steam greenlight but I have been unable to find it on steam. I wouldn't be surprised if they released another team fortress either.

 

[scrubsy]

didn't I say that a few pages back.. ?

Sorry, didn't read the rest of the thread. But that goes to show you how people feel at this point. Defeated.

 

[scrubsy]

No One has promised HL3. It cant be 'vaoprware' if it wasn't ever 'ware'.

I dont know what their aiming at with any of this shiz. Gabe came from the early days of Microsoft though, so I guess OS is in his blood.

I'm sure they do have HL3 somewhere in that building, but it's Valve so they have created and destroyed 20 different versions of it by now.

 

[BioMotor_Unitron]

s
r
s
l
y

I'm not saying Half Life isn't a great series but it's one I just don't "get."

I guess you just had to be there when it came out?

I was there when it came out. I'd still rather play the original Deus Ex or the original StarSiege: TRIBES.

 

[Cylotron]

I was there when it came out. I'd still rather play the original Deus Ex or the original StarSiege: TRIBES.

I got the original starsiege tribes when it first came out at my local software etc. i have never spent so much time on a single game before(and to this date)

 

[Alpha Skyhawk]

I owned one of these for the NES when I was a kid. It's actually usable if you give it some time. Still, I never wanted to see anything like that ever again.

Perhaps this new Steam controller could compliment the 360 controller. Many PC gamers already flip-flop control inputs between mouse/keyboard and gamepad depending on what they're playing. The new Steam controller might actually be good for playing something like Counterstrike on your TV, and then when you need to, you can switch to your 360 controller to play Rocket Knight Adventures or something.

I'm actually looking forward to trying the Steam controller. It looks like it's going to be a spectacular failure, but it could just look so different that we don't recognize its usability yet. I think Valve is smart enough to get this right.

 

[Mac91]

I already have a controller for Steam, it's called the Xbox 360 Gamepad.

This.

 

[Earthquake24]

Lots of questions about the controller, obviously. Some developers have gotten their hands on it and tried it out. Here's some of the feedback of what they thought:

Game creators who have tried Valve's unusual new game controller say that the device holds a lot of promise. But make no mistake, they also say it feels pretty different from what we're used to.

"We've been at Valve this week and only used it briefly, however, you immediately notice its increased responsiveness.," Sega's v.p. of PC digital distribution in the U.S. and Europe John Clark told me in an e-mail late Friday.

Clark is just one of a group of game creators from studios big and small who went to the house of Half-Life, DOTA 2 and Steam and tried the third piece in Valve's three-part announcement of SteamOS, Steam Machine and Steam Controller. All three components will combine to present Valve's push into living room gaming where they and the library of PC-based Steam games will presumably bump into the likes of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

The controller is key, of course. And while Valve says it is hackable, it will likely be defined by certain core features that set it apart from both mouse-and-keyboard and traditional controllers like that of the Xbox 360. It eschews twin control sticks for circular trackpads that are equipped to deliver some haptic (force) feedback.

It moves the traditional AXBY face buttons to the center of the controller, all four surrounding a small touchscreen. Beta controllers, including the one pictured at the top of this post in a photo supplied by Clark, don't include the touch screen and have temporary face buttons in the screen's place.

Clark and his colleague, Jurgen Post, COO and president of Sega Europe had recently visited Valve to try the controller and stuck around for a couple of days with teams of Sega developers from real-time-strategy studios Relic (Company of Heroes) and Creative Assembly (Total War).
Indie developer Ichiro Lambe of Dejobaan Games also tried the controller and gamely tried to explain to me (and you) what the device's trackpads feel like.

"It's tough to grok the touch feedback until you try it out," he said in an e-mail. "You pick it up, and, for the first few minutes, you're mostly just moving your thumbs over the trackpads and marveling at what you're feeling."

Lambe had played a first-person shooter with Valve's new device. It seems that the haptic feedback of the trackpads made a big impression. The idea of that feedback is that it's supposed to create the feeling that the trackpad has edges on it, perhaps the outlines of buttons, if that's how it is programmed for a specific game. Those trackpads are sensitive to movement and pressure.

"This sounds weird, but it's almost like rolling two weighted trackballs that are too large to actually fit into the controller," Lambe said as he tried to explain what it's like to have one's thumbs on those two trackpads. "For camera controls, slide one thumb to the right, and you'll feel this ticking, like you're turning a physical control.

Flick your thumb quickly, and this imaginary physical thing reacts like something with weight to it—the 'trackball' continues to roll for a bit, eventually coming to a rest. And since it's all controlled through the software, the same trackpad then becomes more like a mouse or a laptop trackpad when you're navigating through menus. Dynamic!"

I received similar positive impressions of the controller's haptic feedback from Klei's Jamie Cheng who had not gone hands-on with the controller but whose colleague had. "He told us that the controller haptic feedback was uncanny," Cheng said, "and that using the trackpad really did feel like pressing buttons."

I had asked Lambe how the Steam controller felt compared to traditional game controllers. He replied: "It's familiar enough to be accessible (I believe they tried less conventional designs before they went with a form factor similar to existing gamepads), but much more precise for (say) anything WASD+mouselook."

Valve's Steam controller, Lambe added, "makes FPS gaming more comfortable in a gamepad form factor, and translates other genres (anything where you'd need precise mouse control for gameplay or user interface) to the living room."

If Lambe was a good tester for first-person games, Team Meat's Tommy Refenes was an ideal candidate for seeing how responsive the Valve controller was to classic 2D action games. Refenes tried his and Edmund McMillen's own Super Meat Boy along with Mossmouth's Spelunky with the new controller.

Refenes blogged about his experiences, summarizing them thusly: "TL;DR; Great Start, needs some improvements, but I could play any game I wanted with it just fine." He had said as much to me over e-mail: "I went into it as 'I'm going to play this like an Xbox and see how it does.' In that way it did pretty well."

Refenes' whole post about trying the new gamepad is a must-read. It doesn't just describe the feel of the controller but conveys the vibe at Valve regarding the controller. The company's engineers seem prepared to make changes on the fly—fitting as the controller's entering into a beta. Regarding how the games he played controlled, Refenes writes:

I was able to play Meat Boy the way Meat Boy can be played on an advanced level (and I’m rusty at it). The right circle button was the jump button and we had both Triggers mapped to the Run button just like a regular Xbox 360 controller. We also had the Run button mapped to the back trigger buttons I mentioned before that can be pressed with your fingers on the back of the pad.

This worked great but did lead to a bit of hand cramping. I think this is due more to the way you use the run button in Meat Boy and not the design of the controller or the buttons.
Spelunky requires Whip, Jump, Bomb, and Rope buttons. We configured the controller to play like an Xbox controller. So the left circle pad was once again used for the directional buttons, and the right circle pad was used as A, B, X, Y buttons in the orientation that you find on an Xbox Controller....

I played through Spelunky and the controller worked great. As I was playing I was describing to the engineers the twitch movements that go into Spelunky... The Steam controller handled this just fine.

Refenes said he found himself yearning for a little more physical feedback from the trackpads and discussed an idea with Valve's engineers involving adding physical nubs to the pads "that would be noticeable enough where your thumbs would find them, but not so abrasive that the circle pads couldn’t comfortably used in mouse / trackpad mode came."

He seemed to think that the idea, already considered by Valve, might be tested with newer iterations of the controller.

This is what I considered when I first saw the controller, and it has been a consideration for touch devices in the past. Striking that balance between purely flat and having recognizable nubs that you notice but won't obstruct more mouse-like movement. I hope they definitely test the possibilities and see whether they might add to the controller.

Refenes said he still prefers the Xbox 360 controller for now, somewhat due to familiarity, but said he could be happy gaming just on the Steam controller. He won't be the only person, though, who will consider the controller in comparison to the traditional twinstick 360 or even PS3 gamepad.

Dejobaan's Lambe expressed some warmth for the familiar as well."There's something satisfying about moving a physical stick or depressing a button with some resistance and throw," he said. "The immediate feedback that an analog stick gives you when you reach the extreme of a direction is useful. But how much of that is just a matter of what we're used to?"

A Valve rep indicated to me that other developers have also tried the controller, including indie PC strategy game publisher Paradox Interactive and Hitman studio IO Interactive. The diversity of developers indicates that Valve expects its unusual new controller to be versatile. Consider, after all, that the Sega guys who checked out the controller specialize in mouse-and-keyboard strategy games.

"We'd really like to see how the developers experiment with PC RTS titles [with the new controller] and will value their feedback throughout the beta," Sega's Post told me over e-mail. "Games such as Company of Heroes 2 and Rome II are core for Sega and of course, you would define them as mouse & keyboard games. I'm personally intrigued to see how these games could work with the controller."

Valve's hardware beta for its controller and its Steam Machine gaming devices will begin soon, with an expected release to consumers next year. The controller will raise plenty more questions in the months to come.

 

[NeoSneth]

does it have waggle controls? cuz i really want more games with waggle.

 

[OrochiEddie]

http://kotaku.com/valves-controller-has-been-tested-here-are-some-impre-1415579308
Some more feedback from people who have tried them. Lots of positive comments, some criticisms as well.


I couldn't imagine valve would just make a piece of shit product considering their strong track record as of late.

 

[NeoSneth]

They have zero track record with hardware. A great software company can still screw this up.

 

[famicommander]

I already have a controller for Steam, it's called the Xbox 360 Gamepad.

Shittiest D-pad ever.

Logitech F510 has a good d-pad, plus support for Xinput (360 controller games) and directinput (USB HID games). Also better R1/L1. They're not those awful bumper things.

 

[roker]

Shittiest D-pad ever.

Why is this such a trivial thing to get right?

Contenders for best D-pad:

Saturn (forget about contender, the best imo)
SNES
PS3 (yes, I know those diagonals are hard to hit for some people, but my big thumbs are good with it)
N64 (shitty controller, awesome d-pad)

 

[SNKorSWM]

So you're supposed to use your left hand to press the two buttons on the left and right hand for the other two buttons?

 

[ebinsugewa]

Why is this such a trivial thing to get right?

Well until 2005, Nintendo had patented the only good one. After that, who knows.

Valve has lost their minds. Big Picture, fucking useless. This is a $1000 Big Picture OS machine. WHAT? I have a game-playing, web-surfing, social-whatevering box in my living room hooked up to my TV already. It's called a fucking computer.

The controller: no one is going to use this to play PC games, let's not kid ourselves. DotA2/League? No thanks. Quake/CS/whatever else? Yeah right. "We've improved haptic feedback." No one fucking cares about force feedback when playing games! I'm utterly speechless at the hubris it takes to release such a useless product.

Kotaku article: of course it feels great when you only play games that already work perfectly with a 360 controller! Super Meat Boy and Spelunky, great test games. I love Valve and I think Steam is a solid service. But this is madness.

 

[norton9478]

Why is this such a trivial thing to get right?

Contenders for best D-pad:

Saturn (forget about contender, the best imo)
SNES
PS3 (yes, I know those diagonals are hard to hit for some people, but my big thumbs are good with it)
N64 (shitty controller, awesome d-pad)

I used to have a 3rd party, six button Sega Genesis controller with a d-pad would put all of those to shame. Yes, even the saturns.