Steam's Linux Future. A Smart Move?

[ekianjo]

That's the exact same title as this post on Pandoralive. I went in more depth about what I think about the recent news from Steam, and I'll be happy to get your feedback and see if you feel the same or not.



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[Askarus]

That controller is the biggest shit I've ever seen for a controller.

I tell you what's the only controller for PC games that use Mouse and Keyboard: A Pandora with Master Control

.

Anyway, why should I get a steam machine??

I have a Computer, a bluetooth controller and a monitor.

Steam on Linux is great.

Steam machine is shit.

 

[Klumpen]

"You have to buy this shitty gamepad made from designers for designers along with it in a bundle,

but don't you worry, you can plug proper controls in our system and smash it with a hammer."

Is this becoming a trend now?

 

[TrashyMG]

^ They just seem to be following the Ouya model..

 

[Klumpen]

^ They just seem to be following the Ouya model..

That's why I asked,

but wait, can you even plug in and use decent controls with the Ouya without hacking it?

 

[sebt3]

Beside being on pandoraLive, could you remeber me the link between steam and pandora ?

 

[Askarus]

^

The Article explains why it's in PandoraLive .

My explanation:

It shows an other use for the Pandora: Master Control to replace the biggest garbage ever made as a gaming controller.

Pandora has keyboard and gaming controls.

That controller has neither a Keyboard, nor gaming controls. It has 2 big wholes and (nearly) no buttons.

 

[NLS]

^

The Article explains why it's in PandoraLive .

My explanation:

It shows an other use for the Pandora: Master Control to replace the biggest garbage ever made as a gaming controller.

Pandora has keyboard and gaming controls.

That controller has neither a Keyboard, nor gaming controls. It has 2 big wholes and (nearly) no buttons.

It actually has 16 buttons...

The thing is, Valve's Living room experience is made to work perfectly with a controller in mind, and to be more specific: the 360 controller, which works almost flawlessly plug and play with most modern and indie games. Sure there's other options around (DS3 with bluetooth, any controller from logitech etc.), and they all work with Steam, but the 360 controller is still dominating the PC gaming market. Valve can't really go out and release a console-like experience and expect people to get a 360 controller with it. Microsoft may just pull the plug when it comes to manufacturing it now that the XBone is just around the corner, and even though there's a PC version coming too, who knows how well it will work with Steam. So Valve has to ship their own controller in order to provide an "official" alternative.

Now should they just make a 360/PS3 carbon copy controller, or could they just as well try to CHANGE things for once? The Pandora was once something completely unique as well, even though they could easily just have made a standard PSP/GPX/GBA clone, remember?

You have a PC, bluetooth controller and a monitor. Fine for you. If you wish to install SteamOS on your computer, you're free to do so, and feel free to use your bluetooth controller with it as well, probably works fine out of the box. If you just want to continue on gaming in whatever form you've done it up until now, fine, do so. Noone is forcing this new hardware on you, and you haven't even tried it yet, so maybe you don't need to call it shit until you've been proven otherwise?

 

[PowerGod]

It's just a guess, but I think that the touchscreen in the middle of the controller will be used as a keyboard too...

I don't like analogic controllers in generals on gamepads, I always sucked using them, but I can see me happily using a trackpad, because I played many times "mouse" games (RTS, RPG, Graphic Adventures) with the touchpad of my portable PC, without so much problems.

Seems like that controller will be compatible with everythink already in the market... I hope so

 

[comradekingu]

Best move ever. The touchpad is semi nice, if it was an indented nub with that touchpanel around it it could be nice. I suppose it somehow works right now too, but i prefer physical buttons.

Nice article btw.

I think valve is doing it right, they have dota2 already and hl3 will be huge. Not chaining oneself to one console for 5 years and instead doing a PC makes for smooth transitions. They have also opened up the possibility of building your own, and i suppose the OEMs will follow.

http://www.linuxlifestyle.com/feed/  talked about it.

 

[kasp]

I don't think the controller is terrible, it looks weird but I have faith in valve.  I was reading a review that the creator of super meat boy did and he said and there were a few bugs but after they addressed them he found the controller good.  While he still had his reservations he was overall happy and since this is a beta and very different from other controllers I think that is a good result this early on.     They also managed to get past hell in Super meat boy so the controller can't be complete shit to be able to achieve that.

As for SteamOS I think this is a serious game changer. Suddenly game developers have a target for the linux system and it is obvious valve has been working with developers already. It will be interesting to see how well AMD's drivers are going to cope considering they have been a major contributor of code in the Linux Kernel for the last few years.  It is almost as if they saw this coming and have a real chance of surpassing nvidia whose closed drivers are currently king in the linux world for performance.

 

[Mr_Loon]

The Article explains why it's in PandoraLive .

...

I think the question is more why is this in General Pandora Talk & not other consoles?

As for the controller, the thing that annoys me is that it looks like it could have been great.

Here's what would have been great :

On the left top side DPAD & Analogue Stick / Nub, keep the rest more or less as it is but add extra buttons for little & ring fingers on the base, have analogue triggers for middle fingers & twin shoulder buttons for the index fingers. Keep the touch well on the right hand top side, and keep the touch screen button.

I honestly can't think of a PC game that would benefit from dual touch wells compared to a single touch well and a nub / stick + DPAD on the other side.

Valve are not known for being idiots so hopefully this fact may dawn on them.

Totally agree with kasp RE the OS, it can only be good Lor Linux IMHO. If the goal of significantly increasing the performance of PC Graphics technology through better drivers / APIs can be realised then surely SteamOS will see pretty major uptake amongst core PC gamers.

 

[ekianjo]

I'm not sure how many of you actually read the article since you are mainly talking about the controller and not much else. I couldn't care less about the controller since you'll be free to use any controller you want anyway with your SteamMachine or your SteamOS. 

My point was rather:

Even if you think it's a great idea, why do you think AAA publishers will even support that system ? 

The Linux target already exists currently, it's Steam for Linux. ANd there's not much apart from Indie games. No AAA publisher (apart from the russians of Metro Last Light) have been voicing out any support for it. And that's the case even though there is ALREADY some kind of market and user base for Steam on linux.

SteamOS/ SteamMachines will start with zero user base. Who will use them or buy them ? 

Why buy it if you have the exact same thing as on Steam for Linux ? (yeah you can play on TV but is that really strong enough to push sales forward, especially when you have no AAA titles ?)

And why would any AAA developer even target this system if the user base is close to nil ? It does not seem worth the investment. 

There's going to be a difficult chicken and egg situation when their system comes out, and so far I don't see how they plan to solve it. Unless they have something up their sleeves they have not revealed yet. 

 

[kasp]

I'm not sure how many of you actually read the article since you are mainly talking about the controller and not much else. I couldn't care less about the controller since you'll be free to use any controller you want anyway with your SteamMachine or your SteamOS. 

My point was rather:

Even if you think it's a great idea, why do you think AAA publishers will even support that system ? 

The Linux target already exists currently, it's Steam for Linux. ANd there's not much apart from Indie games. No AAA publisher (apart from the russians of Metro Last Light) have been voicing out any support for it. And that's the case even though there is ALREADY some kind of market and user base for Steam on linux.

SteamOS/ SteamMachines will start with zero user base. Who will use them or buy them ? 

Why buy it if you have the exact same thing as on Steam for Linux ? (yeah you can play on TV but is that really strong enough to push sales forward, especially when you have no AAA titles ?)

And why would any AAA developer even target this system if the user base is close to nil ? It does not seem worth the investment. 

There's going to be a difficult chicken and egg situation when their system comes out, and so far I don't see how they plan to solve it. Unless they have something up their sleeves they have not revealed yet. 

Well the fact is since SteamOS is free it actually takes 100 bucks off the purchase price of a gaming machine. The dedicated hardware suppliers might be able to bring prices down significantly as well.  Then you have steam priced games as an attraction without the fuss of having a computer   So price could be a big selling point.  At first it will be adopted by power users who will mostly have it as a lounge room TV but it will slowly start building a user base.  Then again if they have nailed the os and launch titles enough it could even take some market from Microsoft and sony.

I think this creates a big target for developers to create Linux versions.  I am sure Valve will make installing the games as easy as possible.  End users don't have to worry about extracting or which package type to download and the developers just need to worry about one flavour.  

However Valve has announced they have developers on board and I think a few thousand games. Pretty staggering amount for a launch when you think about it. The only reason it doesn't seem impressive is because of the monster amount of titles they already have.  If you treat it like a new console it is impressive.

 

[ekianjo]

Well the fact is since SteamOS is free it actually takes 100 bucks off the purchase price of a gaming machine.

You don't pay the cost of the OS on the current consoles, and usually consoles are sold at the price of manufacturing or a little less than that in order to drive the user base further as fast as possible. So a "free OS" is not going to change things much here in terms of pricing.  

Then you have steam priced games as an attraction without the fuss of having a computer

Xbox live arcade of PSN games have low pricing as well, for indie titles. That is not very much different from Steam.  

 Then again if they have nailed the os and launch titles enough it could even take some market from Microsoft and sony.

To get market share from Microsoft and Sony you need AAA titles. Indie games are not going to cut it.

Who's going to make AAA titles apart from Valve if the installed user base is close to zero in the first year? No-one. Again, chicken and Egg problem. Users will not buy a SteamMachine either because these games are missing. No incentive.  

I think this creates a big target for developers to create Linux versions.  I am sure Valve will make installing the games as easy as possible.  End users don't have to worry about extracting or which package type to download and the developers just need to worry about one flavour.  

One flavor ? I don't think so. It's not going to be a single hardware. A single OS maybe but you will have to ensure your game works well with AMD, Intel and nVidia cards because manufacturers will make their own hardware around it. That makes it a bit more complicated for developers to ensure their games will run about the same for all hardware configurations on the market. 

However Valve has announced they have developers on board and I think a few thousand games.

Few thousand games IF you already have a gaming PC with WINDOWS running somewhere in your house, and if you set it up to do streaming to your SteamMachine.

If you are a console gamer without a gaming PC, the actual number of games you are going to get on a SteamMachine is about 200, most of them (99%) being Indie games.  

Again, I'm all for being enthusiastic and all, but I fail to see the actual value proposition that will bring new users, so far. 

 

[WizardStan]

You don't pay the cost of the OS on the current consoles

You also don't pay the cost of the OS on a desktop. OEM Windows is entirely subsidized by all that pre-installed garbage that the knowledgeable uninstall immediately and the less tech savvy think they have to pay for in order to keep using their computer.

 

[ekianjo]

You also don't pay the cost of the OS on a desktop.

You dont pay it but the Manufacturer does, with special negociated rates. SteamOS would indeed be free and slightly cheaper in that sense. 

 

[WizardStan]

You dont pay it but the Manufacturer does, with special negociated rates. SteamOS would indeed be free and slightly cheaper in that sense.

No, the manufacturer doesn't pay it either: developers pay it. The manufacturers get paid to include all the additional programs as I mentioned, typically enough to cover the Windows license and sometimes more. They can actually turn a profit by bundling more stuff into the base Windows install. When Dell first released their Linux line of laptops, it actually cost more than the Windows version for this very reason: the cost of supporting Linux, as low as it is, was higher than the substantially subsidized cost of including Windows. You can no longer buy Dell laptops with Linux pre-installed and this is believed to be one of the reasons: when you can't get paid to pre-bundle a bunch of software, it is surprisingly not cost effective.

 

[ekianjo]

The manufacturers get paid to include all the additional programs as I mentioned, typically enough to cover the Windows license and sometimes more.

Interesting if true. Then can you explain why the first netbooks came out with Linux several years back from many different manufacturers (not just one) instead a running XP and bundling lots of software, which would have then be more "cost effective" if we believe your version ? I thought the reason provided by the press at that time was that Linux enabled them to save maybe 50 dollars on a XP license and therefore made a significant impact on the low pricing of netbooks. 

If you have any source to substantiate what you said I'd be interested to check it in more details, too. 

 

[kasp]

Well Valve has stated they have AAA titles on board.

I think this is going to make a lot bigger waves then people are initially thinking.  People said the exact same thing of Android and you can look at how well that has done for itself now. Granted it will take some time to get traction but Valve is a force to be reckoned with these days.  If Steam boxes start selling (and considering the amount of Valve fanboys out there) I am sure developers will get in on that as well.

Anyways I hope their is a market for them as I bought a domain specifically to sell the things on.