http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/
Steam Machines. It looks like they aren't going with "Steam Box" that people have been using for a while now.
Valve is working with various hardware partners to bring a range of Steam hardware to living rooms in 2014.
In addition, you can put your name in the hat to beta test their hardware by completing the Steam Hardware Enthusiast badge. If you're one of the lucky 300, you get a prototype to play with and test. Free of charge.
http://steamcommunity.com/my/badges/15
Mostly, right now, they're saying "more info soon" but there's some good info there.
The very last thing on the page, about input devices-- "Stay tuned, though - we have some more to say very soon on the topic of input." I think the third announcement is going to be about the controller that will ship with Steam Machines.
Back in 2009, Valve filed a patent for a customizable controller-- we may be seeing the production of this patent.
http://www.google.com/patents/US20110105231
The icon for Friday's announcement is O + O, which does kinda look like a controller. Isn't speculation fun?
Steam Machines. It looks like they aren't going with "Steam Box" that people have been using for a while now.
Valve is working with various hardware partners to bring a range of Steam hardware to living rooms in 2014.
In addition, you can put your name in the hat to beta test their hardware by completing the Steam Hardware Enthusiast badge. If you're one of the lucky 300, you get a prototype to play with and test. Free of charge.
http://steamcommunity.com/my/badges/15
Mostly, right now, they're saying "more info soon" but there's some good info there.
The very last thing on the page, about input devices-- "Stay tuned, though - we have some more to say very soon on the topic of input." I think the third announcement is going to be about the controller that will ship with Steam Machines.
Back in 2009, Valve filed a patent for a customizable controller-- we may be seeing the production of this patent.
http://www.google.com/patents/US20110105231
The icon for Friday's announcement is O + O, which does kinda look like a controller. Isn't speculation fun?
If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.
Sign Up / Log In
Got the badge. Kind of hoping I am one of the 300 but I bet there will be MANY participants in the beta :D
http://steamcommunity.com/id/jdodson/badges/15
I'm only one away. I know I've played a game with a controller in big picture before, but it claims I haven't.
Got the badge, too. Seven minutes after the announcement. Hoping that I, too, am one of the 300 selected.
A lot of Steam games are designed for mouse and keyboard, so it's going to be interesting to see how Friday's announcement addresses that group of players.
Ugh, I need friends...
ILL BE FRIENDS WITH U @HARDEYEZ!
Why is it ugh?
I'm anti-social with gaming :)
Really, I like seeing a few friends notify when they are online via steam (the ~6 I already had), but more than that is annoying. Guess I'll just have to figure out how to tweak notifications.
And, since i have the nice CG steam group to ping from, I get a better class of "friends" to add :)
Oh, and it's crazy that in the last 10 minutes it went from 9800 qualified candidates to almost 12,400
OMGOMGOMG! We finally have a release date (Sorta!) and details (Mostly)! SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY, VALVE!
Dang, I need to go pick up a gamepad so I can get the badge. I meet all the other requirements.
Oh and @Hardeyez, you (or anyone from CG who is reading this) can friend me on Steam. I go by whiteboyslim on there as well. Plus you can find me in the CheerfulGhost Steam group. :)
But as to the actual announcement, I am excited to pick up a Steam Machine. Not terribly interested in hacking my own system together, but getting something where the price and feature set is right.
I'm interested in both. If I can get a decent rig provided by Steam, awesome. OTOH, if I can just build my own mini-computer and since, it'll be dual-bootable, boot to the media center when I won't be gaming. This is all subject to change since we're still talking next year before they're available for purchase.
@whiteboyslim - +1 for the Logitech F-series if you don't have an XBOX 360 controller to use. Good solid controllers and Steam recognizes and configures them automatically.
Uhm, this could be a very good fake or something very interesting:
http://i.imgur.com/37x0wwN.jpg
Yeah I don't know how much I believe that. People screw around like this on 4chan all the time. The Anon could have just taken widely available information, widely believed speculation about today's announcement (that proved to be true), and one of the most popular theories about Friday's announcement. Even if Friday's announcement comes out to be true, I'm not sure I'll believe this is a Valve employee.
Now if the nvidia streaming tech is what shows up on SteamOS, and the other smaller things he talked about turn out true, then I'll say this was an actual Valve employee.
But yeah, I think it's likely that Friday's announcement is either a Steam Controller or something about games, whether it's an engine or a new game (or both). It looks too much like a controller not to be one of those.
Troll or not, there are some pretty accurate facts about why Linux is a good choice for Valve. Full customization of the OS to their liking...right down to the kernel level.
Totally agreed, bean. That's why I like it as well. Now to get the games there so I can stay put! It seems AMD and Nvidia are ramping up their work on Linux drivers since the announcement of SteamOS. Things are actually looking better for Linux than they ever have, I think. I'm not about to say "2014 is the year of the Linux desktop" but this is going to help.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049369/amd-nvidia-ramp-up-linux-driver-support-after-valves-steamos-announcement.html
Every year since 1989 has been the year of the Linux desktop. >_<
AMD really has no choice but to start working on their drivers. I follow the Linux Steam client bugtracker on github and there are a number of issues regarding ATI drivers from AMD. If it took the announcement of Steam Machines to get AMD to sit up and take notice, then so be it.
Valve developers announced early on via their blog (http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/) that they were able to work directly with the hardware manufacturers. Even then, the improvements that came about through that joint venture were already being shared with Linux users. So, I think Valve has already shown that they really do want to make Linux just as viable a gaming platform as Windows. At times, I think even more so.
I think more so because they can. They can modify the kernel and get drivers optimized for Linux. I am unsure what Valves relation to the Windows OS is, but my guess is it's not too great.
I totally dig Valves involvement here, its a win all around. Even if your not a gamer because better In Kernel video drivers are good for everyone that uses Desktop Linux. Which, all told is pretty darn good from my experience.