Valve announces SteamOS

[SNKorSWM]

Go for broke. Get that Steel Battalion full control setup style. Manufacturing costs be damned.

 

[Lemony Vengeance]

since they're announcing today, this is the Steam machine I've held and used:

http://kotaku.com/well-learn-more-about-the-piston-living-room-pc-on-m-1414219833

and trust me, it's not worth it.

At all.

Ever.

The price point is too high. it's great for a low to mid range PC, but at 1K, it's too pricy. The GPU blows, the CPU isn't the best.

 

[Dr Shroom]

lol 1k
who are they trying to fool?

 

[Cylotron]

Microsoft is doing well with their Surface Pro tablets which as the ads state "starting at $799.99". Not to mention that anytime a new iPhone is released, people line up to pay off contract price of anywhere from $550 - $850 for one. So sure, not everyone is going to be able to afford/willing to pay $1K for a Steam Box... but there will be plenty of people who will.

 

[NeoSneth]

since they're announcing today, this is the Steam machine I've held and used:

http://kotaku.com/well-learn-more-about-the-piston-living-room-pc-on-m-1414219833

and trust me, it's not worth it.

At all.

Ever.

The price point is too high. it's great for a low to mid range PC, but at 1K, it's too pricy. The GPU blows, the CPU isn't the best.

So what you are saying, it's like gaming on a Mac?

 

[Lemony Vengeance]

Never games on a mac.. Didn't know you could.. But tell me, how do you play portal? Seems pretty... Impossible with one mouse button, no?

 

[Dr Shroom]

Well you can always use a PC mouse..but they got apple mice with two buttons too.

 

[Cylotron]

That's another thing... if you were to buy an Apple computer with similar specs(hardware) to that of a Windows based PC, you'd end up spending more then double the price. Even then, people still throw away money left & right on Apple computers. So if Apple can do it, why not Valve?

 

[Lemony Vengeance]

Because valve is going open source, which means suggestions for he, but that's it.

 

[ki_atsushi]

Never games on a mac.. Didn't know you could.. But tell me, how do you play portal? Seems pretty... Impossible with one mouse button, no?

People still think that Apple uses one button mice still?

I think we're going on at least 10 years now of two button usage.

 

[Dr Shroom]

That's another thing... if you were to buy an Apple computer with similar specs(hardware) to that of a Windows based PC, you'd end up spending more then double the price. Even then, people still throw away money left & right on Apple computers. So if Apple can do it, why not Valve?

Because Valve doesn't have a track record of thirty years of "stylish" uselessness and the shit-eating fags it attracts.

 

[Earthquake24]

since they're announcing today, this is the Steam machine I've held and used:

http://kotaku.com/well-learn-more-about-the-piston-living-room-pc-on-m-1414219833

and trust me, it's not worth it.

At all.

Ever.

The price point is too high. it's great for a low to mid range PC, but at 1K, it's too pricy. The GPU blows, the CPU isn't the best.

If they were to make any profit from this at that price, that money won't be staying with them for long if they think they'll get away from flat out copying the 360 controller. Microsoft lawsuit incoming in 3..2..1..:

 

[Cylotron]

If they were to make any profit from this at that price, that money won't be staying with them for long if they think they'll get away from flat out copying the 360 controller. Microsoft lawsuit incoming in 3..2..1..:

View attachment 7517

nice shopped' 360 controller.

this is the actual Steam controller however....

 

[Earthquake24]

That one is the Steam controller for the Valve Steam Machine. But no, really the above photo is from the Piston console from xi3 Corp. Check it out at their page: http://www.xi3.com/piston and scroll down near the bottom of it.

 

[Pope Sazae]

I think that Steam Controller is all part of a massive troll by Valve and some others and soon they will come out and say "You thought that thing was real? You gotta be fucking kidding. Here is Half-Life 3"

 

[Lashujin]

I'm curious about the controller after reading the Meat Boy creator's take.c

 

[Lemony Vengeance]

Lol, I knew Macs use 2 buttons. Troll success!

 

[Dr Shroom]

Lol, I knew Macs use 2 buttons. Troll success!

No.

 

[SNKorSWM]

$1K? You could buy Xbone, PS4, AND Ouya together for that kind of coin.

 

[Earthquake24]

Valve has released the specs to the 300 prototype Steam Machines. Definitely will not be cheap. But they make the point that if this one isn't for you, they'll be others:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse#announcements

Steam Machines - Prototype Details

October 4 - Gregori

Hello from the Steam hardware bunker.

Thanks for joining the Steam Universe community group. As we get closer to shipping the prototype Steam Machines and controllers we talked about last week, we're going to be posting info here about what we're up to, and give you some insight into the work we’ve done to get to this point.

As we talked about last week, the Steam Machines available for sale next year will be made by a variety of companies. Some of those companies will be capable of meeting the demands of lots of Steam users very quickly, some will be more specialized and lower volume. The hardware specs of each of those machines will differ, in many cases substantially, from our prototype.

Valve didn't set out to create our own prototype hardware just for the sake of going it alone - we wanted to accomplish some specific design goals that in the past others weren't yet tackling. One of them was to combine high-end power with a living-room-friendly form factor. Another was to help us test living-room scenarios on a box that's as open as possible.

So for our own first prototype Steam Machine ( the one we're shipping to 300 Steam users ), we've chosen to build something special. The prototype machine is a high-end, high-performance box, built out of off-the-shelf PC parts. It is also fully upgradable, allowing any user to swap out the GPU, hard drive, CPU, even the motherboard if you really want to. Apart from the custom enclosure, anyone can go and build exactly the same machine by shopping for components and assembling it themselves. And we expect that at least a few people will do just that. (We'll also share the source CAD files for our enclosure, in case people want to replicate it as well.)

And to be clear, this design is not meant to serve the needs of all of the tens of millions of Steam users. It may, however, be the kind of machine that a significant percentage of Steam users would actually want to purchase - those who want plenty of performance in a high-end living room package. Many others would opt for machines that have been more carefully designed to cost less, or to be tiny, or super quiet, and there will be Steam Machines that fit those descriptions.

Here are the specifications for Valve's 300 prototypes.

The 300 prototype units will ship with the following components:
GPU: some units with NVidia Titan, some GTX780, some GTX760, and some GTX660
CPU: some boxes with Intel : i7-4770, some i5-4570, and some i3
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600 (CPU), 3GB DDR5 (GPU)
Storage: 1TB/8GB Hybrid SSHD
Power Supply: Internal 450w 80Plus Gold
Dimensions: approx. 12 x 12.4 x 2.9 in high

As a hardware platform, the Steam ecosystem will change over time, so any upgrades will be at each user's discretion. In the future we'll talk about how Steam will help customers understand the differences between machines, hardware strengths and weaknesses, and upgrade decisions.

We aren't quite ready to post a picture of our prototype - just because they're not finished enough. Before they ship we'll let you know what the prototype looks like. And we expect people to redesign the machine, too. Both from a technical perspective, deciding on different components, and from an industrial design perspective, changing the enclosure in interesting ways.

So high-powered SteamOS living room machines are nice, and fun to play with, and will make many Steam customers happy. But there are a lot of other Steam customers who already have perfectly great gaming hardware at home in the form of a powerful PC. The prototype we're talking about here is not meant to replace that. Many of those users would like to have a way to bridge the gap into the living room without giving up their existing hardware and without spending lots of money. We think that's a great goal, and we're working on ways to use our in-home streaming technology to accomplish it - we'll talk more about that in the future.

Stay tuned for some closer looks at the Steam Controller.

 

[mr_b]

I give them credit at least for being transparent in their OS and releasing the CAD files for the designs they have. But the price point and need of a primary box to run the games people are going to want to play on top of needing their streambox I don't see how this is going to compete with next gen consoles. PC is pretty much an after thought for developers anyway. Anything running native on steamOS isn't yet to be a killer app.

HL3 isn't going to push $1,000 units even if its exclusive.

 

[SNKorSWM]

It's like every single console manufacturer think it's the "neo geo" of the next gen and has the MSRP to match.

 

[Cylotron]

they're putting a gtx titan into the machines? that card alone is $1,000..

 

[ebinsugewa]

At first I thought I was overreacting.






Not at all.

 

[Jeneki]

Hmm, the article says the final products won't necessarily be all high-end, and also that they want the prototype machines to be something special. It seems like they're going more for initial wow-factor than actual "testing" of a variety of low-mid-high builds.