Your thoughts on Steambox, and SteamOS?

[froggyboy604]

What are your thoughts on Steam OS, and Steambox/Steam Machine which was recently announce this week?

Steam is coming to a new operating system
As we’ve been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we’ve come to the conclusion that the
environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself.SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen.It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.


Steam Machine
Entertainment is not a one-size-fits-all world. We want you to be able to choose the hardware that makes sense for you, so we are working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS.

Source:: Steam

I like SteamOS since it is based on Linux, and I read online that Nvidia, and AMD are both working with Steam on improving its video drivers for Steam OS, so hopefully SteamOS means there would be better Linux video card drivers from Nvidia, and AMD. SteamOS also would use less RAM, and CPU resources than Windows, so it could be good for slower computers.

Steam Machines sounds pretty cool. I hope Steam also let people install programs and games from the internet, CD/DVD discs, and dual boot Windows with Steam OS to play Windows games which are not available on Linux yet.

 

[Nuke]

It's stupid. The whole point of a console isn't just "to be in the living room", as Valve is definitely implying here. It's a twofold meaning: ease (uniform hardware) and the controller. They have the controller, which I don't really like too much, but they don't have uniform hardware in any sense of the term.

 

[VirusZero]

On my own site when discussing this, I stated:

I don't really think that SteamOS, Steambox or their controller is really going to do much. (Based on what I know so far... which could change as I find out more.)

From what I understand the operating system is based off linux (which not very many games really support yet). And the Steambox has the option to let users switch operating systems (so many are likely to go over to Windows, which has support for most games).

So unless they make SteamOS mandatory and lock out the ability to switch to force linux compatibility... they're going to have a crippled base of games to start with. And no real reason for people to stick with SteamOS.

And the controller uses touchscreen-like components for analogue sticks. And touch screens typically aren't really that great for precise movements. They can work in a pinch, but actual analogue sticks tend to work much better. (More precise and feel better on the fingers especially after playing for a while.)

And to top it off, the Steam box itself is just a PC (that users can upgrade).

So it's really not that important to have/buy if you have a decent gaming PC. And if you don't, you'd likely be better off investing the money into one rather than this.

Steambox basically defeats itself as a console. I mean part of the charm of a console is simplicity.
I mean consoles have set hardware so that games programmed for it will work. There's no worries about whether your graphics card can handle it or not. No need to spend more money to upgrade it. No worries about actually performing the upgrade.

And sure the OS is based off linux... but so far not many games on steam have support for linux. So if few games on steam support then what's the point? They'll be shipping this box with crippled library. (Which might only end up an incentive to install windows...)


Another site put it best...

When a big-name game developer builds up an enormous amount of goodwill — and funds — from fans, it inevitably gets lost amidst its own amazingness. The most notable instances of this are Nintendo and Square Enix, and Sega to a lesser degree. Both Nintendo and Square could do no wrong in their heyday, churning out legendary game after legendary game — the main Mario series, Super Smash Bros., Final Fantasy VII through X, Vagrant Story, Chrono Trigger, and so on. Eventually, both companies felt they could do no wrong and began ignoring common sense. Nintendo released concepts no one wanted like the 3DS and Wii U, while Square Enix made the worst Final Fantasy in the series (XIII) by far, then stubbornly didn’t move on, and instead released two more sequels. So far, Valve has experienced a similar rise to stardom, with Half-Life, Portal, and Steam. Now, much like Nintendo and Square, it appears Valve thinks it can do no wrong, and is launching a regular PC that anyone can build with an OS that doesn’t matter and a controller that doesn’t solve the problem of PC gaming from a couch.

Quote Source

 

[froggyboy604]

There are free programs like WineHQ, and PlayOnLinux which let you install Windows Games and Programs on Linux, so Steam OS would technically let you install Windows games on Linux when you use WineHQ or Play On Linux.

I think Steam OS will be a niche operating system for someone who wants a free operating system to play Dota 2, Team Fortress, Counter Strike, etc but does not want to use Ubuntu which has gotten more heavy after they replace Gnome with Unity user interface, and gamers do not need all the bundled software like Libreoffice, or Firefox to play games. Windows also come with a lot of stuff like System Restore, Printer drivers, and Windows Defender which make Windows slower, and use more RAM, and CPU cycles. Plus, Windows cost $99-199 depending on the version, so the money can be better spent on a faster video card, CPU, or more RAM on a PC running Steam OS which is free.

Steambox maybe expensive, but there would also be third-party Steamboxs from other companies, so the third party steamboxs could be $99-199 cheaper than a comparable Windows Gaming PC since the buyer won't need to buy an expensive Windows license like a Windows Gaming PC.

I read iConsole.TV would run SteamOS according to http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/20/icon ... t-steamos/ , so a 3rd-party Steambox could be $500 or less depending on how much the iConsole cost when released.

 

[VirusZero]

The only issue with using emulators to simulate a windows based environment is that, traditionally, there often has been a performance hit involved. (In the past it was a fairly large hit but I'm not certain about now with PCs that have: 4 or more cores, 8 or even 16 GB of DDR3 ram, SSD drives for the OS and etc... Though this SteamBox very likely won't have specifications that are that good to start with. Not and keep under 600$.)
So some of the more demanding games might not do so well in those situations.

And that's not even to say that those programs will necessarily work in SteamOS to begin with. (It may well be Linux, but it could be their own unique variant. Sort of like how Android is based off Linux, but it doesn't look/act like desktop versions even though it is still Linux.)

There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the operating system.
(And thusly a lot we don't yet know. So it's hard to say exactly how the final product will turn out.)

 

[Nuke]

The only issue with using emulators to simulate a windows based environment is that, traditionally, there often has been a performance hit involved. (In the past it was a fairly large hit but I'm not certain about now with PCs that have: 4 or more cores, 8 or even 16 GB of DDR3 ram, SSD drives for the OS and etc... Though this SteamBox very likely won't have specifications that are that good to start with. Not and keep under 600$.)
So some of the more demanding games might not do so well in those situations.

And that's not even to say that those programs will necessarily work in SteamOS to begin with. (It may well be Linux, but it could be their own unique variant. Sort of like how Android is based off Linux, but it doesn't look/act like desktop versions even though it is still Linux.)

There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the operating system.
(And thusly a lot we don't yet know. So it's hard to say exactly how the final product will turn out.)

Source games (probably also Steam) only run on two of four cores. It's pretty pointless. RAM use within one application is usually limited to 3GB, so I don't think that would be useful. Also, SSDs are still very expensive. The Wii U runs on SSD, which is why it has less storage than the PS4/XB1. I would doubt their widespread use on Steam Machines, since they cost so much and consumers want cheap consoles.

 

[CM30]

It sounds interesting enough, although it's not for me. I prefer owning physical copies of games than buying them in digital download format, so I don't use Steam to begin with.

 

[froggyboy604]

The only issue with using emulators to simulate a windows based environment is that, traditionally, there often has been a performance hit involved. (In the past it was a fairly large hit but I'm not certain about now with PCs that have: 4 or more cores, 8 or even 16 GB of DDR3 ram, SSD drives for the OS and etc... Though this SteamBox very likely won't have specifications that are that good to start with. Not and keep under 600$.)
So some of the more demanding games might not do so well in those situations.

Wine/"Wine is not an Emulator" it is an Windows32 API implementation to let users run Windows games and programs on Linux. The performance difference running Windows programs with Wine is about the same, or better than Windows sometimes because there are no Windows background processes like the bundled Windows Defender which can slow down your PC because of Defenders' high RAM and CPU usage if you don't turn it off in the Control Panel settings.

In some cases, Wine can run games made for Windows XP where the same game would not run in Windows Vista-8 because of compatibility problems, but run in Wine with Linux.

Windows Games Run Faster on Linux with Wine than on Windows Vista

WINE is an implementation of the Win32 API on Linux, so that you can run programs written for Windows on your GNU/Linux installation.

Cedega, then, is a commercial version of WINE optimized for games. It runs a larger library of Windows games than plain WINE can. So far, so good, right? Now, common sense might dictate that the games should run slower in WINE or Cedega, because those things are busy translating the Windows-nonsense the games speak into something that GNU/Linux can understand, and that surely costs performance, no?

Common sense is wrong. These benchmarks say that GNU/Linux with Cedega or WINE runs the tested games 33 – 40% faster than Windows Vista. 40%! That’s not just the fraction of fps that the hardcore crowd lusts for, that’s a significant number.

So the best modern platform to play Windows games on is not Windows but GNU/Linux? Creepy.

http://blogs.fsfe.org/rca/?p=4

Depending on the release date of the Steam Box, $600 maybe enough money to make a decent Steam Box because of the falling prices of computer hardware after newer hardware is release for a few months where the more affordable manufacturers like CyberPowerPC, or iBuyPower can use better AMD CPU and video cards, 8GB of RAM, a hybrid SSD/Hard drive combo drive, and motherboard to build a computer installed with the free Steam OS. The Steam Box also won't need a Blu-Ray drive since it uses the Steam's online store instead of discs, so the lack of a Blu-Ray Disc drive could make a PC with Steam OS around $60 cheaper.

 

[Jason07]

Sounds interesting, doubt ill be buying it though