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Comment by matthew-wegner | Hacker News Reader

Valve has three announcements this week: http://kotaku.com/looks-like-well-hear-about-valves-new-hard...

One of the announcements is widely believe to be the long-rumored Steam Box hardware...

Yeah, but you know that we'll only get two announcements and the third will be delayed indefinitely.

From the iconography on the main page I'd guess the second announcement will be Steam hardware and the third one will be Half Life 3 (second circle indicates software product again?). Pure speculation on my side here.

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/

We know that the circle represents the SteamOS. The brackets int the second announcement must represent SteamBox. The third announcement has two circles with a plus sign in between which has to do something with connectivity to other players. Probably an equivalent of Xbox Live. ( My bet for the name is SteamPipe :) )

If Half-Life 3 was represented it would have to be a sign inside the circle as it is mainly a singleplayer experience. Also a single game as a third announcement is way too narrow-minded as Valve already has the one of the most popular games (Dota 2).

The SteamPipe name is already used for their content distribution system: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamPipe

Steam already has most of the xbox live functionality. Friends list, messaging, voice chat, online store. I think the only major missing piece is probably 'parties' though maybe that's in there (I've never had much of a need for it personally).

Why is the circle off to one side of the box. Maybe I'm reading too much into it... but perhaps it could be a game controller and not a set-top box?

That could be interesting... but I must say, the Xbox360 controller is fantastic, inexpensive, and easily integrates with a PC. Sort of a solved problem, if you will, so unless they have significant value to add, I'd hope they'd focus elsewhere.

but microsoft can simply make the xbox360 controller difficult to implement in other games (tho i don't know how they'd do that…), and would effectively stop indies from supporting it. Having a proprietary controller, but coded using an open library (akin to what the steam workshop does), might mean that it's easier to have games implement controller support that's not fragmented.

It's a standard USB HI device, you don't need any kind of MS code to use it. Changing it would make it incompatible with their existing xbox360 install base and games for windows. I guess they could stop selling the xbox360 controller, but why would they when it's making them money?

Valve took out a patent a while back on a gamepad where the fixed D-pads were replaced with sockets that could accept a D-pad, a trackball, extra buttons, etc: http://gamerant.com/valve-console-controller-hold-137072/

I will be so Goddamn happy if they're actually making that thing. I love modularity, and a trackball gamepad would flawlessly combine the convenience of a gamepad with the precision of a mouse. Several groups have tried to bring one to market, and studies have shown their superiority, but apparently they were too weird to get enough preorders. Hope hope hope...

The third icon could be O: Steam OS + O: Orange Box 2. Orange Box 2 may include Half Life 3 and more.

Damn now you got me exited..., No! Half-Life 3 is still far far away.

We now know that the circle is SteamOS. Then, the second announcement would be "SteamOS in a box", and the iconography of the third announcement is "two SteamOS". This probably has something to do either with playing or sharing with friends, or more details on streaming games from another machine on the network.

Come to think of it, Dota2 just mentioned recently an update that either just came out or is coming out in a few days that would allow you to play a Dota2 LAN game. Perhaps the third announcement will be more along the lines of sharing a game only you own with friends on your LAN, for that sort of purpose?

Back to the halcyon days of yore, when a single copy of Starcraft was all you needed for a great night of LAN gaming for a number of people. Allowing 'spawned' copies for friends to share for gaming would make co-op games so much more fiscally bearable.

Steam doesn't properly support sharing games still. You can share your entire library and if you aren't playing anything at all, your friend can play a game from your library. Which you could do already, you just had to give your friend your password. Currently me and my brother share a library just fine by having one of us set steam to offline mode and then we can all play at the same time. It's less useful than the old behaviour, but without sharing your password. Oh and you can save in the cloud and earn achievements personally for yourself. Excuse me while I vomit.

Useless.

> iconography of the third announcement is "two SteamOS".

Two Steam OS added together. I think it means if you get two devices running steam you can combine them to increase the available resources for playing a game. Possibly some kind of build in clustering API that steam games can use.

As this is as good a place as any to record my guess, I'd go for some sort of virtualization.

O = SteamOS

[O] = Hardware partners Steam box (in tiers inc. an inexpensive stream target box for $99)

[O O] = Being able to run a SteamOS game on your Windows system. Think DOSBox or HyperV.

If they could do this then really it's a case of convenience vs performance, and a few exclusives or two would push people to dual boot rather than VM it.

It could also be the way they plan to stream, i.e. a self-contained mini-OS that runs under Windows but streams out/in visual and inputs. The 'local' version fits ok with that, in that you can run a SteamOS title in Windows by localhost'ing it really.

Just speculating, but it's interesting to think about.

A 99 dollars havfdware? That would stink bad in terms of performance.

I was just thinking a dedicated OnLive / ChromeCast like wee box for the LAN, perhaps with a Valve designed controller (i.e. an analog something). All real processing would be on the host SteamOS PC really, with dedicated hardware to help reduce lag on the stream.

I think you didn't read the announcement correctly. Sure the box can do streaming but it is also expected to run "native games". So, for streaming maybe a cheap box is OK, but for actual gaming on the box, you'll need something way more powerful than what you can get for 99 dollars.

That's why I used the word 'tiers' if you read more carefully. The bottom tier may be an inexpensive streaming box, the highest tier may be a high performance dedicated gaming PC running SteamOS.

Got it. Then I agree, such tiering is possible.

If I were them I'd make Half Life 3, Portal 3 and whatever next versions they have of their own games, exclusive to their own Steambox, at least first months or so.

They might not get as much money on the games themselves initially, but they'd make so much more on the hardware (they don't need to all Blu-ray and all the extra crap, so they could be profitable on it), and it would also be a great way to seed their console into the market, so developers target it.

Alienating their main user-base for the sake of promoting their own console seems like a high-risk play when most people already are aiming at spending their "console-allowance" on the PS4 or One. The Steam Box is supposed to be modular (upgrade-able), while being strictly plug&play, this alone gives it a huge edge over existing consoles. Now we know SteamOS will be Open Source, and we know both Nvidia and AMD are commited to improving Linux drivers. What that means is AAA-titles don't even need to be ported, the Wine layer is able to provide 1:1 performance as proven with for instance World of Warcraft. The Wine devs don't even have the luxury of source access like game developers to.

All in all, if Valve does this right they're sitting on a potential goldmine.

Too bad PS4 wasn't based on Linux, too. Both could've helped Linux games a lot more.

1. Steam

2. Steambox

3a. some VR peripheral (looks like a VR goggle/headset to me)

3b. some special cross-play between Steambox and Windows/Mac/Linux

3c. cross play between steambox and PS4

I hadn't thought about the possibility that day 3 could be about their VR stuff. Abrash has been beavering away on all that stuff for some time now. It has also been a fair while since he posted anything up on his blog (July 26, 2013): http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/

I am sure it will be just 3b or 3c. a VR peripheral would be a long shot but I would be glad to be wrong. :)

1. SteamOS

2. Steambox

3. It looks like two sets of wheels from side on. Gaben is giving us all A NEW CAR!!!

Steam OS needs to be on the Public Domain like an Opensource Project..Which it will most likely be..

In addition to that the Hardware should also be opensourced, like how to build the most optimal gaming console to work on Steam OS...

But It will all come down to the gaming pad, how the gaming pad will be designed and how it will integrate with build your own systems

Steam OS needs to be on the Public Domain like an Opensource Project..Which it will most likely be..

Steam is a DRM platform with a few user features on top. Releasing an open source platform would be as uncharacteristic as suicidal.

Have to think about it like android, FOSS linux base that in most cases ships with a non-FOSS storefront application from its primary contributor.

I don't think game publishers would trust their cash cows to an Android platform either.

The controller is the most interesting hardware component, the rest can improve over time much more easily.

Why would they announce the software separately from its #1 use case?

Casual vs Hardcore gaming. If they announce the console first, and it's not able to run the latest and greatest games on their highest resolution they stymie the idea of being able to run SteamOS on a high end gaming rig.

This way people are thinking about how they can run SteamOS on their existing hardware before thinking they need to run it on a Steambox.

well, the next icon on this page http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/

sure looks like a box enclosing the circle that turned out to be the OS. It's not really a separate announcement as this is all part of one unified event.

Third one is more interesting since they already announced streaming from Steam to SteamOS.

Maybe this? But who really knows, with Valve:

"SteamOS will be available soon as a free download for users and as a freely licensable operating system for manufacturers."

Same reason Android was announced before the first phone: because surfing the wave of rapidly improving hardware is part of the plan.

Valve likes to escalate announcements. It would be very "Valve" to announce the OS, which can run anywhere, and then next announce the box they want you to run it on.

...and then announce the game that you'll be playing on the box?!?

No, it's not half life 3. The logo for the 3rd announcement wouldn't make any sense then.

My thought is to temper disappointment. If they announced the steam box today and it ran a flavor of Linux it would be a disappointment. If we know about steam OS for 48 hours before the steam box announcement, we would all expect the steam box to run steam OS.

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