The debut price is about the same as the PS4/XBone, but doesn't include the monthly fee for multiplayer, and if you look at the long-term total cost of ownership it's cheaper than a console, especially when you consider that in the future you can upgrade to new hardware without rebuying your games, which consoles cannot guarantee.
Except that it runs on Linux, which has less performing drivers than on Windows, and Linux ports are usually far less optimized than their Windows counterparts as well (which is not hard to understand since most games are made with DX in mind).
Most Steam Machines are Nvidia based, which makes sense, they have the best drivers, and they're generally 1:1 as performant as their windows drivers. I have a GTX970 in my Ubuntu machine and it rocks, supports my gsync monitor and everything; trumping console performance is pretty much a no-brainer with modern nvidia maxwell stuff...
I hope you are joking, because branding-wise the Steam Machines are a clear mess and completely confusing for people who don't know how to read PC specs. Hell, you have Steam Machines planned with only Intel HD graphics and also called "Steam Machines" just like the Alienware Alpha and the Syber ones, while power-wise they fall in totally different categories. That's the best way to kill your brand, at least 3DO never did that kind of mistake.
> they're generally 1:1 as performant as their windows drivers.
No, this is clearly false. I don't know where you get this impression, check almost every benchmark out therefore for Borderlands 2, CS:GO, Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite and almost every other AAA game out there, you will see that the Linux performance is clearly behind. I'm a Linux gamer as well but at least I don't pretend we are at the same level as Windows, because that's a clear lie at this point.
> trumping console performance is pretty much a no-brainer with modern nvidia maxwell stuff...
It should be, but many ports on Linux are far from being optimized (some rely on OpenGL 3.x to maintain compatibility with AMD while it's clearly less efficient than OpenGL 4.x calls) while console ports are much more likely to be tested thoroughly on a single hardware based and optimized for it.
Replace "Steam Machines" with "Andriod" and you could make the exact same arguments. And the thing is people have, and they have been to an extent completely correct. But, I don't think you would say Android hasn't been a very successful bet for Google, despite the fragmentation and huge range of quality for different mobile devices, and the problems with branding they have. What I'm seeing is Valve trying to make the exact same play in the console world, where Microsoft and Sony have it locked down very much the same way Apple did (or was on the way to doing) with the smartphones. They want to break people out of those walled gardens and bring them into their ecosystem, and they're going to provide an open platform for any hardware maker to do it, just like Android did.
Of course mobile phones and consoles are two different industries, it might play out in a similar way or it might play out completely differently. But I think it's a bit premature to write it off as ridiculous or even a bad idea from the start when there is precedent for this sort of strategy working in other industries. It certainly has a chance of playing out well for Valve, branding and fragmentation be damned, as long as it opens up a much larger audience to Steam.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
And every time I've looked at that list, Intel integrated graphics have been fairly prominent.
Some of the arguments against the steam machines make me feel like I've fallen into some weird "console vs pc" propaganda war, rather than a factual discussion about business strategies.
For consoles, the choice is already very clear out there and the well known brands are Xbox, Nintendo and Sony, period. You can see how nVidia is struggling to establish their Shield brand in the market by the way, as a good indication of how hard it is to enter the market. There is nobody who "needs" Steam Machines out there right now, because they already either have a console, a PC or both if they actually care.
And additionally, Valve is too risk-averse to actually build and sell hardware by themselves (or even take a NEXUS approach like Google), which makes me think they don't even believe in the Steam Machines themselves. We will see.
I just about understand nvidia cards and the numbering system, but how they interact with i5/i7 and different memory?
(cue 1,000 geeks who will try and educate me)
I just want to buy a box that is better than XBoxOne at the same price. At this rate I think a used XBoxOne off ebay is a better option. Let steam machines bake for a year or so.
The worst thing that can happen for steam machines is when 99 people buy the budget version and 1 person buys the dream machine, the 99 people see the dream machine beat their budget machines and now you've got 99 disappointed customers and 1 happy customer.
This doesn't happen with playstation, wiiU or xbox. Steam machines are going to fail and I'm pretty gutted about that.
Give me a solid number so I can compare machines quickly. How much Steam does my SteamMachine have?
Even if you include a date - "Steam 2016 grade 1" you're going to need some kind of comparison table to work out if your game ("runs on 'steam 2017 grade 3'") will work on your machine or not.
After a recent review of low-end (well, compared to an i7) AMD apus paired with high-end gpus[1], I'm not even sure most "professionals" can get anything meaningful out of specs alone. Sure an i7 with ddr4 is "better" than a dual-core AMD APU -- but if your target is 1080p gaming, it might not be much of a difference -- given the same GPU.
So it shouldn't be that hard make the statement "runs on Steambox rated 24 or higher" be true for all generations of steamboxes. Even when that'll have to be changed from 24 to 24000.
[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/9307/the-kaveri-refresh-godava...
Honestly the XboxOne has more value, right now, than the Steam Machines in terms of how well games will run on it. But you can say that the Steam Machines may have more games (but not as many that you can play with a joypad - since some PC games require a keyboard anyway). It's not a straightforward comparison, and it depends a lot on what games you want to play in the end. If you want AAA games, right now it looks like the Xbox one is a better option, but maybe that will change later in 2016. Who knows...
> now you've got 99 disappointed customers and 1 happy customer.
Which is precisely why they should have setup minimum specs for their Steam Machines, or at least have a Valve Steam Machine that sets the standard. But Valve did not do that, and I am also concerned they will fail precisely because of that.
Apparently the steam controller is designed to be a suitable replacement for a keyboard/mouse, and will include a system for sharing controller mappings for games over steam.
I have tried the Steam controller (the beta version from a while ago) and it is certainly not as easy to use at they make it look like. It certainly takes a while to get used to it.
So it might require practise, but according to this anecdotal evidence, it has the potential (if your dedicated enough) to form a suitable replacement.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/38jcel/introducing_th...
[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/38jcel/introducing_th...
The entire point of Steam Machines is not to deal with this, just buy the cheapest Alienware, done. If you care about that sort of thing, you buy a different one.
> check almost every benchmark out therefore for Borderlands 2, CS:GO, Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite and almost every other AAA game out there.
Doesn't matter. I have an Alienware Alpha and I can get 60 fps on every one of these games in SteamOS, as least as good as the modern consoles, Windows performance it depends; some are better, some are not; all TVs and projectors are 60hz, so unless someone is coming out with 144hz gsync TVs, then it's more than fine.
Sure, we get boned by games like Dying Light, but that's just software, totally fixable.
> t should be, but many ports on Linux are far from being optimized
You could make that argument about any crossplatform game.
Except that obviously won't work. In the console world I really don't have to deal with this. I buy a PS4 at launch and I can play every PS4 game that comes out from now until they stop making PS4 games. That is obviously not with Steam Machines. Will the cheapest Steam Machine play every SteamOS game that comes out in 2 years time without problem? If the answer is 'no' then it is something that I have to be aware of and deal with.
The other option is that Valve steps in and says that if you want your game to be SteamOS certified it must be optimized to run well on the slowest Steam Machine we've ever released, but I wonder if they're willing to that. Can you imagine telling game developers in 2017 that they must make their games work fine on 2015 era Intel graphics cards?
This is totally fine for loads of indie games already. And If you replace 2015 with 2013, of course you could do this. PC technology has slowed down a lot compared to 10 years ago, and it's not the constant upgrading it used to be.
You know that VR is coming right?
You can play 2017 games on lower graphics quality (the same quality you get in 2015 games now) just like the consoles. Even if the games they get on the PS4 in 2017 are new, they are bound to remain the same quality in graphics.
Decades? Decade, maybe. But then again they where still releasing PS2 games a decade after the PS2 came out and they'll almost certainly be releasing PS3 and Xbox360 games a decade after those consoles came out too.
No doubt that there will be lots of games coming out in both 2017 and 2020 that will run just fine on a 2015 steam machine, but unless it is ever single game they release for SteamOS, then we're right back to the classic PC gaming problem and you've lost the only real competitive advantage that consoles have.
Where? Good luck playing something on a 2014 Steam Machine in 2024. If there is still one game 10 years later working on such a configuration that will be a miracle. PC gaming moves very fast, that's the point of PC gaming usually : you upgrade often.
No. That hasn't been the case for years, now. I built a machine in 2010, and gave it its first upgrade a couple of months ago.
And to tell the truth, I could've gone on a couple years more before I really needed to upgrade. The biggest bottleneck was the GPU (an nVidia GTX 460). However, I splurged on a few upgrades (GTX 960, up to 16GB of RAM (from 8), and an SSD). It's once again a beast, even with the same CPU from 2010 (AMD Phenom II X6 1090T).
And that extra money that I've put into this system? I've made most of it back in the way of cheaper games.
Yeah, and then complain that the newest games in 2016 don't run well on your hardware, while you thought it was just like a console! What a surprise!
> I can get 60 fps on every one of these games in SteamOS
Put in ultra details, with anti aliasing maxed up, and I'll be very surprised if you still get steady 60 fps, in all honesty. And oh, it's been benchmarked that anti-aliasing makes the performance go down significantly, I'll get numbers for you if you don't believe me.
> Sure, we get boned by games like Dying Light, but that's just software, totally fixable.
Yeah, except that it has taken them 3 months to fix to an acceptable level. Please explain that to consumers buying it on Day 1. Oh, and remember, they are "console gamers" since you said so, so I hope you enjoy the fun communication with people who don't care about specs or optimization or drivers.
> You could make that argument about any crossplatform game.
Yes, except that the requirements for Linux ports are usually higher than for Windows. Source: Steam requirements. Again, please go explain that to console gamers.
I imagine that steamOS can update drivers transparently to have always best configuration for gaming. The support team will only need to answer clients when a fix will arrive automatically.
That's not really a good benchmark, if drivers is the thing you want to compare.
And additionally, Witcher 2 is not really using a wrapper, at least not in the WINE sense of the word. Witcher 2 uses eON which basically does conversion of DirectX calls to OpenGL calls at compile time, not execution time. So it's arguably pretty close to native.
Yeah, when your graphics cards costs mores than the entire console (Groupon has a deal right now for a $304 Xbox One without Kinect, and the cheapest GTX970 on PCPartpicker is a Zotac at $310.95), that tends to happen.
> Steam Machines don't compete with Windows, they're complementary to existing Windows machines (game streaming)
Sure they do. If anything, they compete against Windows much more than they do against consoles. There are reasons to own both a console and gaming PC. There's no reason to have a Windows gaming PC and a Steam Machine. Windows is a superset of a Steam Machine's gaming capabilities. The main reason for people owning a gaming console along with a gaming PC are the exclusive games, people will buy an entire Xbone for Halo or Destiny. There are no Steam Machine or Linux exclusive games.
Thats... not quite true, interestingly enough. Excuse the ZDNet link: http://www.zdnet.com/article/valve-linux-runs-our-games-fast...
What an odd world we live in.
It's a lot easier to optimize for the Xbox One or the PS4 than it is PC games, because there's only two hardware targets for console games, and so you don't have to code around drivers or corner cases that only affect some users, you can optimize to your heart's content and everyone has hardware identical to what you're testing on. Being more powerful than an Xbox One or PS4 is not the same as being able to run the same games well.
Cost of ownership is a more complicated question than you posit here -- you have to buy new hardware more often, and if you're taking advantage of the in-home streaming feature to fill the massive AAA gap these things have, it's almost impossible to recapture the cost of TWO gaming PCs compared to the cost of one Xbox/PS by saving money on games.
At least that used to be the case. Perhaps the modern generation of consoles are so complex that they can be compared to PCs.
But consoles have something that PCs don't-- a floor. If a kiddo buys any piece content for their xbox or whatever, the darn thing will run guaranteed and be pretty OK.
The same definitely not true for new a piece of content on a PC.
PC's might not have a performance ceiling but they probably need a baseline floor. MAYBE these Steam Machines can help rectify it for down/middle market.
The fact that it will result in more games running on Linux is also a plus (for me).
There's your problem right there. "No true gamer" would ever take Alienware seriously as there is a massive brand markup. You are paying for the logo on the box. The stuff in the box is obsolete when it hits the shelves. Look at practically any other brand if you want to see competent pricing.
Alienware are good business machines (as they do have unmatched post-sales support). They aren't gaming machines, not even at a basic competency level.
It's a big pity that Valve partnered with these extortionists, it's no good for the platform.
Either way it's a beachhead for them in the living room, and as computing devices become smaller, and cheaper over time, (and Linux game support increases) they're better and better positioned.
I'm kind of adjacent to the demographic for this thing. I don't have a high-end gaming PC, but I have Steam installed on my Mac laptop (Mac and Linux support are basically the same in Steam) for mostly indie/classic/old games. Notably, you can't stream Steam games from the Mac currently (though I don't think there's a fundamental technical reason for that, edit: hmm, the info page seems to suggest I can stream games if I update to Yosemite).
If I didn't already have a Wii U for living room gaming, I'd probably buy one of these boxes. I might still, depending on how useful the hardware is for other purposes.
Which spec doesn't meet the minimum for Arkham Knight?
https://www.oculus.com/blog/powering-the-rift/
I would not buy any of these and expect them to work well with the Oculus Rift.
I think that Steam Link with their controller is a pretty compelling option though. I also think that the nVidia Shield tablet was also an interesting approach... I'm hoping that the first generation of this hardware doesn't bomb too much... The mid-range systems should have enough oomph to come out over current gen consoles, one niggle is that I'd rather see hybrid or straight SSD drives when you're coming to that level of cost.
EDIT: And no optical drives in the Alienware machines as far as I can tell, so no using it as a Blu-ray player either.
The value Windows offers decreases too as it become more and more reasonable to buy a PC for nothing more than gaming, whereas before you'd need a bunch of uses to justify the cost. Would Windows make sense on the streaming box for example?
http://store.steampowered.com/search/#sort_by=Reviews_DESC&c...
1. Valve is already profitable.
2. I do not believe that they are charging Steam Box manufacturers a licensing fee unlike 3DO so that may help.
3. Reading the article, it looks like some Alienware models are able to dual boot as a Windows PC? If so, that helps justify the price. A $750 PC isn't expensive vs a $750 video game console.
2. They are not, indeed, but the other problem is that manufacturers need to make money on the hardware, making Steam Machines more expensive that consoles anyway (and more than self-built PCs as well).
3. Yes, and not just Alienware. But honestly, if you are going to put it under your TV, I have a hard time imagining people using it as a PC on their TV screen. Monitors are better in that regard, and you usually want to be closer to the screen for regular PC use.
http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ip...
What are the benefits of SteamOS? 1080p is less resolution than a good PC monitor has.. not to mention most graphics cards can straight up use HDMI anyway.
That said, latency is additive since it all happens in serial, and if the sum of it hits a certain threshold ("human perception") you begin to notice. So maybe you save a few ms from the network with wired vs wireless, or a few ms with a fancy "gamer" controller, or a few ms with a nice gpu-powered video encoding algorithm.
Shave enough of these things (which are only now being designed with this sort of over-engineered latency in mind), and eventually playing over the network is less latency-prone than playing directly on a machine from not that long ago.
Though the minimum on-wire latency at 100MBit is 0.12ms for 1500-byte packets, per packet, typically 1GBit cards also have lower latency internally.
(You can multiply that 0.12ms number by the number of intervening switches, plus one.)
Here are some "real numbers" to give you a lead.
Strategy, RPG and other mouse controlled games are certanly more than playable in such a setup. Didn't try online FPSes though.
Adding another millisecond from the network may not be significant for teenagers and casual gamers.
For all intents and purposes, these are essentially Steam consoles. The only difference from other consoles being the variable specs.
With the Rift, this simply does not work, as you can't really see the edges unless you strain - UI elements need to be near the centre of view. Skyrim controls worked well here, being a centralised HUD that you pop up when you need it.
Sounds like a DailyWTF error message. That being said, I don't think the goal is to get AAA PC games into the living room. I think it is to get greenlight games into the living room.