darthbator

Return of the Steam Box!

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http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/8/3744314/gabe-newell-valve-console-living-room-steam-box

I didn't see anything posted about this! Looks like Valve stealth confirmed " steam centric hardware", coming next year, at the VGA's. Sounds sort of nebulous and vague but potentially really exciting. Seems hardware manufacture's will be able to take their shot at their own designs and valve will just be providing software distribution services. What do you guys think? Lemon? Great? To early to tell? Consoles are doomed? Discuss!

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upload a couple of days ago...this is the first i've seen of it. I love the first comment on the article :)

if this come out before the next box and ps4 i'd probably pick one up so i could play all these PC indie games i'm missing, i'd imagine it would be pretty cheap. It would steal all of OUYAs thunder

reasonably priced download only games, and all the steam sales and such like. Its the future innit. It can happen sooner or later but it will happen

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First kneejerk: this will be good for people scared of big noisy gaming PCs and putting them together out of a million intimidating parts.

Follow up: these people are the least likely to ever find out it exists and what it does unless Valve goes just Microsoft on the Xbox 1 hard on it, cramming it into every electronics/gaming type store in the world right next to the PStriple and 360, securing monstrously huge exclusives for it (HL2 ep3 Steambox exclusive!). This isn't a device the traditional Steam demographic really wants or needs, unless they were looking for a HTPC to begin with.

I guess I just don't see this reaching the critical mass to be anything other than a footnote or a sticker for HP to stick on pre-built PCs (then again I never thought the Nintendo DS would sell either)

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Damnnnnn HL3 exclusive on the steam box. I would have to buy one, no if's or but's a guaranteed sale. wow if they did that DAYUMMM

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The quote sounds to me more like their previous statements they expect HTPC's to become more popular this year and they plan to support that with Big Picture mode. Apple's been hinting at doing something with TV lately as well, so I think the market is priming for it. I would go nuts if Valve does manage to release a Linux based HTPC, though.

That said, I think they have a good bit of work ahead for them before they can really pull it off. I've been participating in the Steam Linux beta and pick up just about every Humble Bundle that comes out. Running games that require hardware acceleration is still hit or miss, especially if they were developed using any kind of middleware. I'm excited for the prospects of Valve bringing serious gaming to Linux, but I hope everyone tempers their expectations. The gaming community is going to have to exercise some patience to make this work, something it's not very good at.

I remember the last big push for commercial Linux gaming in the early 2000's, when Red Hat was the dominant desktop for consumer Linux. I built out a Red Hat rig with a GeForce card and purchased Ximian Desktop, Q3A, and Jagged Alliance 2. I loved it. When Red Hat decided to retool their business and focus on the enterprise space, it left a big hole in the consumer Linux world and software companies didn't have a common denominator to work from. Only in the last few years has Canonical managed to finally fill that gap with Ubuntu.

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I'm struggling to believe that this tiny thing can play Video games and the box under my desk cannot. I really didn't expect it to look like that!

...Actually I'm just gonna say it, this straight up makes me feel like a bum for owning a PC I can't play games on.
Also sorry I couldn't find a video that doesn't have such a dopey host.

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Pretty sure this isn't the steambox. Just a computer that Valve has invested in and that will support Steam. If it was the steambox I doubt Valve would be sitting silently by and letting this be the main marketing push.

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I was having a debate with Arthur Gies over Twitter about this box last night. There's a lot of pessimism as to how this is going to possibly be Valve's Steambox, or at least what people perceive it to be. That is, a PC that works in a home theater setup using the Big Picture frontend and will play essentially all controller-capable PC games.

I generally agree with the concerns but don't pair it with so much pessimism, mostly because I have no expectations that a sub-$500 PC will play Crysis 3. The weird thing about this Xi3 company that Valve is teaming up with is that they specifically make small form-factor, low wattage PCs. They've previously made hardware that runs at 20W, mostly thanks to ULV processors like Atom and optimized components for low power draw. They have this proprietary modular design that basically chops up a conventional motherboard into three separate components, meaning you can upgrade the processor/chipset independently from say the port layout that you see on the back of this grapefruit-sized box.

Anyways, size really is the limiting factor in this device and why they have such low-power components. They have prototyped what they call the X7A, which purportedly has "gaming capable performance graphics", but Xi3 has yet to detail how they make this happen. The power supply of this device literally can only be so big, which is why I can't possibly see them going over something like... 100W in what will potentially be the Steam box. That means that even something like the lowest power desktop-targeted Core i3 CPU (which has a TDP of 95W) wouldn't fly.

So, TLDR? I don't think it's really possible to have conventional hardware in this box, meaning no Core-whatever processor and even more certainly no dedicated graphics card of any kind. This leads me to believe that this runs either an Intel Atom processor or AMD Fusion. Both of these chipsets even at the most performance-oriented tier only crank out 720p, medium, 30 FPS graphics on fairly conventional games like World of Warcraft or Just Cause 2. That would leave essentially no room for the future. If anything, I imagine that this box won't come out for at least 9-12 months because Valve will want to wait for next-generation ULV chips from Intel and AMD. The next-gen Atom will have Intel 4000/Ivy Bridge equivalent graphics, which will bring it slightly beyond current AMD Fusion levels. Next-gen Fusion will drive multiple monitors and be quad-core, both specs that Xi3 has bragged about in this box.

Also, Linux? If Valve indeed wants to make their Steambox on Linux, they're going to be sending a big message - AAA isn't nearly as important for PC as you think. Why do I think this? Because there's no way in hell that EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Square-Enix, or anyone else will even consider mainlining Linux development. If the Steambox does run on Linux, Valve will be making a big bet on indie gaming and a much smaller bet on the hardware, which won't need to be nearly as capable to run non-AAA games.

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They are stating "A quad-core 64-bit, x86-based 32nm processor running at up to 3.2GHz (with 4MB of Level2 Cache)" for X7A in their press release. I don't know which processor that translates into.

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I don't think it's really possible to have conventional hardware in this box, meaning no Core-whatever processor and even more certainly no dedicated graphics card of any kind. This leads me to believe that this runs either an Intel Atom processor or AMD Fusion.

Intel NUC managed to fit Core-i3 + HD4000 in much smaller package than Piston, so I don't see why it's not possible right now - right now it's about $400 + mSATA ssd which makes $500 pricepoint impossible, but future UCFF boards may be more affordable.

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I guess they could use an external power supply, because really the power supply would be the largest component in a PC like this even for just a 95W TDP Core i3 T-series processor.

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The best argument I've heard for all this was that there is no one Steambox, but rather a platform of various Steamboxes from multiple companies, to give consumers more choice. Valve may or may not put their own out, but it would be in their interest to get Steam as the default gaming option on as many of these small console-like boxes.

Also, Valve are apparently showing some different hardware/box behind the scenes to certain people... So yeah, the Piston is not THE Steam Box!

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Neat!

"We’ll come out with our own and we’ll sell it to consumers by ourselves. That’ll be a Linux box, [and] if you want to install Windows you can. We’re not going to make it hard. This is not some locked box by any stretch of the imagination."

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Also, this is a weird, but exciting, statement. So.. an open backend for developing your own Steam Storefront??

"Right now there’s one Steam store. We think that the store should actually be more like user generated content. So, anybody should be able to create a store, and it should be about extra entertainment value. Our view has always been that we should build tools for customers and tools for partners. An editorial filter is fine, but there should be a bunch of editorial filters. The backend services should be network APIs that anybody can use. On the consumer side, anybody should be able to put up a store that hooks into those services. Our view is that, in the same way users are critical in a multiplayer experience, like the fellow next to you is critical to your enjoyment, we should figure out how we can help users find people that are going to make their game experiences better. Some people will create team stores, some people will creates Sony stores, some people will create stores with only games that they think meet their quality bar. Somebody is going to create a store that says "these are the worst games on Steam." So that’s an example of where our thinking is leading us right now."

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Very exciting. This could be great!

I used Big Picture mode one and really liked it -- then it crashed in the background and I didn't receive my achievements and I swore never to use it again.

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There was totally a video about using some sort of Xi3 computer to control an unmanned vehicle, but I can't find it now that all the SteamBox stuff has effectively DDOSed Xi3's homepage.

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Some people will create team stores, some people will creates Sony stores, some people will create stores with only games that they think meet their quality bar. Somebody is going to create a store that says "these are the worst games on Steam." So that’s an example of where our thinking is leading us right now."

I totally want an adventure game store. Also Idle Thumbs store.

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In anticipation of me becoming a future steambox owner i thought i'd try and login to my steam account that i haven't used in about 7 years, lots of pissing around with recovering passwords and stuff but i finally got in. (I should really delete steam off my work computer now...)

Thats weird that you can't change your account name, ho hum

Amazingly no one had claimed my username in all this time

http://steamcommunity.com/id/mington

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The Idle Thumbs store will only sell Far Cry 2 and provide a weblink to QWOP.

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That was the first thing i said when (i think) Shaun said in this weeks podcast 'hah! Piston, pissed-on...'

And comparitively 'So far Wii and Pissed-On, what next, the WiiU fails so Nintendo strain-out their hip 8th console: UrN8

Sometimes i love being British...

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