Steam - In-Home Streaming

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

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http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse#announcements/detail/1945848997594939000

Many Steam game developers are currently working on native SteamOS titles, which will result in the best possible living room experience being delivered to their customers. In the meantime, we believe it’s important to make sure that the existing catalog of games is also available to Steam users in the living room. So we're working on in-home streaming, a way for people with good home networks to seamlessly play their Steam games anywhere in the house.

We've posted a short series introducing the feature on Steam:

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Responsiveness
Part 3: Home Networks
Part 4: Beta Testing
Part 5: Q & A

Please join our Steam In-Home Streaming community group for more information and a chance to be selected for the upcoming beta test.
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Native Steam-OS titles... Mmm.

I LOVE VALVE, however, if they do not soon realise that their own **** does indeed stink, they are in trouble, BUT, we shall see I guess. If this is in some way as nerfed as the Family "Sharing", fasten your seatbelts.

They have banked a LOT of "good will" from their customer base over the years but in their current direction, maybe some people will be making some withdrawals?
 
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I stream games anyway without any hassles. My son's PC is in offline mode, steam has my shares as a library on his machine and away it goes.
 
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Witcher1979 said:
I stream games anyway without any hassles. My son's PC is in offline mode, steam has my shares as a library on his machine and away it goes.
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That's not the same thing :p

Steam streaming means having your gaming PC upstairs or wherever you keep it, and using that as the machine to do all the horsepower, but actually playing the game using a lightweight HTPC plugged into your TV in your living room. The keyboard/controller is plugged into the HTPC and you're playing it like it was the HTPC you're playing it on, but your computer is doing all the grunt work.

Think of it as Onlive, except over a LAN.
 
Gimpymoo said:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse#announcements/detail/1945848997594939000

Native Steam-OS titles... Mmm.
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I think they are just throwing a lot of options about to see what sticks.

They already have Linux games and Steam OS is Linux, so if the box has the grunt why not allow it? Although, I think the main reason is that MS is gradually closing the Windows Eco system and Valve want an alternative place to go and are hoping the games developers feel the same.
 
Native Steam OS games just means having a Linux version anyway, well that and I suspect half decent Steam Controller support.

I have been meaning to give Windows to Steam Box streaming a go, might try and get time this weekend to see how it goes.
 
More games Linux users can get the better for them imo. If I was a new PC gamer and this was all working and all new games were being made for Linux/Windows I would go back to Linux in a snap, but I have to many old games that would need to be streamed...
 
Just got the BETA invite for this last night, will be trying it out this afternoon with Grid 2 :)
 
FrenchTart said:
This. I'm not sure I understand the worries in the OP?
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I am not 100% sure that Valve need to be placing their efforts into their "own" operating system/distro.

Why not just ensure better compatibility among the most popular Linux distros? I do not use Linux however as I find it cumbersome (I try it once a year and it always feels "incomplete"), I am not a Linux user though so take my comments with a bucketful of salt.

Their own hardware, their own operating system? Is this something Valve needed to be doing?

They obviously see the industry going in a specific direction and are trying to "catch the wave" early which I can understand.
 
I think they very much do need to put effort into their own OS/platform.

Linux distros can be incredibly disparate. Aside from the gaming performance advantages (and the obvious entrenched user base) this is one of the key areas where Windows beats Linux for ease of entry and support. If Valve want some kind of Linux platform to gain popularity they need to choose *one* platform and throw the full weight of their support behind it. This is the only way that they can remotely hope to compete well enough to drag some of the non-techy consumers away from their comfortable Windows boxes.

Choosing their own distro as the primary platform they support makes sense for obvious reasons. They should also work to make sure that they support other distros as much as possible but it does make far more sense to concentrate all your support efforts on one environment that you can control.
 
We all know how Valve do things though, they are very big on getting their community to help do things, they will no doubt get a ton of feedback on Steam OS and that will help them refine it. As FrenchTart says, they want Steam OS to be the linux version Steam developers use going forward to try and keep things simple.

Hardware, well they have no risk there as third parties are the ones making them.
 
McGray said:
What would be an estimated cost for an HTPC to do this?
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I am thinking about spending £150 on the N54L microserver + get bit more ram + a low profile gpu like the 640 which should run quite a few older games on medium settings (bf3 @ medium @720p is ~30fps apparently) natively + steam streaming. And should come in at under £250 all in and will also serve as a always on NAS/media server and such
 
Would it be wrong to say that PC gamers mostly use their PC's for other tasks.

If that is true, does this mean gamers will need to dual boot operating systems in the long term if the Steam OS is successful if no Linux options are suitable?

If the answer is "Just use Windows", does that mean this is a product aimed MAINLY (Lets be honest, it will be difficult to convert the majority of Windows users to Linux) at the "Big Picture" users?
 
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