So Gabe instead of announcing HL3 told the really reliable guys at kotaku that Valve will launch it's own Steam HTPC, most likely running on Ubuntu Question is, can it compete with consoles? Apple saves a giant wad of cash building the same 2 or 3 models of everything and buying tons of parts in bulk so Valve could do the same, but can you even make a decent gaming PC for less than $500 that lasts at least 3 years? Also will this mean more games for Linux? think that one thing is porting games from a console to a PC with closed hardware, and another to a PC that can have a billion different hardware combinations.
valve have alot of experience with pc gaming, i dont have any doubt they could do this, but rather than porting console titles to pc platform. port the pc platform titles to the pc based console box.
The worst possible scenario here would see them making HL3 exclusive for this console for like 6 months to drive sales.
Steam waste too much time checking their panties for spots instead of making proper PC games. It's clear they want to go the console route, they are a great PC platform... All their console ports were crappy afaik.
Less than two years from now it will be A DECADE since HL2 A decade, think about it..............if they do this that console is going to sell for sure.
I'm not so sure. Unless it's something really really special I think HL3 will have a rough time gaining the attention of the COD kiddies. Those in the market waiting for HL3 are likely to be the people who will turn their noses up at the idea of having to fork out for another system just to play it. I'll be one of them. They used HL2 to drive Steam and drove me mad with the 6 hour wait it took to activate my hard copy. If they try to launch a new product again using HL3 as the driver this time, I'm not going to be happy.
Steam to possibly build a console like PC for the TV room? Now I've heard some ambitious ideas but this one takes the cake. Alienware tried this out with their X-51 PC. Last I've heard it wasn't selling to well due to the obnoxious price. But since Valve has an ace up their sleeve in the form of HL3 they may be able to pull it off.
No thanks. There are already more than enough options and venues out there to play games. What's the point of this.
They are basically trialing that now, with the pointless "big picture feature" although it works exactly the same as Windows Media Centre.
And to think MAXIMUM PC just built a Steam powered TV room PC to run the Steam API in that "big picture feature" in the Holiday issue... Page 62 shows how to enable "big picture mode" and page 66 shows how to set the Steam API up on a TV room PC complete with peripheral selection and such...
Godammit Gabe, quit dicking around and just give us HL3 already. Jerk. But seriously, how is this going to work if it's Linux-based? Most of the games on Steam are written for Windows, so they would all have to be ported to Linux, no? Seems like a huge hassle when they could just make it Windows-based and already have all the games available.
The other day I was checking for laptop prices in other countries and was blown away by how low some prices were Less taxes? nope they actually have even more, the thing is many of those laptops didn't have windows Each windows license costs money, and you don't get to mod it to work as you want, you can only add bloatware that tries to do that With linux valve could make a steamos that allocates all resources to games and nothing else, no fucking metro apps on the background sipping resources away And if this steambox uses linux then those games will be already be ported just as they are ported to consoles, and porting from windows to linux within x86 afaik its easier than from x86 to another architecture After all PS3 has no directX and it gets even more games than PC these days
wouldnt be too much of a major task to port some games, but i doubt the current catalogue of games would be ported anyway im sure they'd have other titles lined up specifically for the platform. there's actually far less issues then i expected with steam on linux as it is and alot of the time its not actually steams fault. i expected issues with pulseaudio but there doesnt seem to be any. although so far i've only played serious sam 3: BFE downloading TF2 as i type its nearly done, once they finish the source engine port that makes it possible to easily make all the source engine games available not to mention all the indie games which already support linux. but as i'd assume they have more lined up than just HL3. edit also noticed they seem to be pushing gamepad support on the pc platform. personally i dont use gamepads for pc games. i assume they're doing this to attract gamepad / console users and also for the steambox erm box
Perhaps there's some kind of licensing issues with using a Windows based OS in direct competition with Microsoft? I know some arcade boards run on Windows based platforms, but that's kind of different to this?
"Perhaps"? microsoft's contracts for OEMs are a kick in the nuts as-is, imagine if on top of that you want to make a console to compete against the xbawks As I said not being able to mod the OS is bad enough: for valve the best deal would be getting a Win7 starter license, trim it even more and only let steam run on it, but microsoft is having none of that Even tiny mods so a laptop's drivers work properly fall into the "Signature" label and that takes a whole new level of certification
aren't playstation games written with Linux workstations? This wouldn't be the first Linux box (aside from the Open Pandora, which I still need in my life.)
One good thing that would come out of this is that developers would be further pushed to make their PC games Linux compatible
