Valve making three Steam-related announcements next week

james.miller · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:24

Rooster212 said:
The Nvidia Shield has had nothing but decent reviews concerning this so I don't see why it wouldn't be better on something with decent hardware behind it (not that Tegra 4 isn't decent!)

oh I'm thinking input latency rather than video bandwidth. Streaming it wont be much of an issue. It'll be interesting to see how they manage it

Boomstick777 · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:26

Martini1991 said:
I want to see how this'll work with Direct X.
It has potential, but then we do other stuff with our PC's but game.

I'm sure you will still be able to look for porn

.

Cd0gz · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:29

Big picture mode already has an internet browser on it, they will no doubt add more for SteamOS. Microsoft must be ******** themselves.

I wonder what the other announcements will be as this one is pretty big news.

Fire_fly · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:29

Depending on how good the media integration is this has good potential for a gaming / HTPC setup.

However I don't think I will be running Steam OS instead of Windows on my Desktop anytime soon.

Rooster212 said:
The Nvidia Shield has had nothing but decent reviews concerning this so I don't see why it wouldn't be better on something with decent hardware behind it (not that Tegra 4 isn't decent!)

To achieve this though you have to have quite a high end, and expensive, router. It will be interesting to see what the hardware requirements are for Steam to do the same.

teppic · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:33

Well, SteamOS is very likely going to be a branded Ubuntu that boots directly into Steam. That already comes with the latest Firefox and Chrome browsers. There's XBMC as well for watching films.

Martini1991 · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:34

teppic said:
It'll use OpenGL, not DirectX.

Indeed, hence the question. Given games are generally DirectX.

teppic · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:35

Martini1991 said:
Indeed, hence the question. Given games are generally DirectX.

Native porting means switching to OpenGL. That's what Valve's done with Half Life 2, etc.

Martini1991 · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:38

teppic said:
Native porting means switching to OpenGL. That's what Valve's done with Half Life 2, etc.

Somehow I've got my doubts that all my old 4 year old games are getting OpenGL ports.

I wish I had your optimism.

Valve porting their games to support an OS that they've started putting stock in since Gabe hates Windows 8 doesn't have a massive bearing on others.

teppic · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:42

Martini1991 said:
Somehow I've got my doubts that all my old 4 year old games are getting OpenGL ports.

I wish I had your optimism.

Valve porting their games to support an OS that they've started putting stock in since Gabe hates Windows 8 doesn't have a massive bearing on others.

I don't imagine old games will get ported. If they don't sell on Windows any more, there's not much incentive to port them to a new platform. Some existing AAA games though are being ported according to Valve, and future big games will certainly all be available given Valve's dominance. Apparently the porting process is not difficult. I remember Valve said that when they ported Source to OpenGL they got huge performance improvements.

Boomstick777 · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:43

^^ As long as new games get the ValveOS treatment I couldn't care about the old ones. I have wanted to ditch Windows in favour of a bloat free OS for gaming for a long time. Will be dual booting SteamOS for gaming with W7 for work stuff. Look forward to testing it out.

Martini1991 · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:43

But the games do sell, on Steam.

There's loads of old games people are constantly buying every sale.

I'm looking forward to seeing how it pans out, and I'd love to use something like this.

randal · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:45

Hmm interesting, I'll be watching this with great anticipation.

2 days until the next announcement, I'm betting hardware. Then the third will be the combined service they offer together.

Then, when the combined product is available we'll see L4D3 and whatever selection of Hats and gabe-a-belia that'll bring.

teppic · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:45

If older games are selling well on Steam then I expect that if the game developers aren't prepared to port them, Valve would offer a deal where they'd do the porting themselves for a bigger cut of the profits (or get a third party company to do it).

Rooster212 · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:46

Fire_fly said:
To achieve this though you have to have quite a high end, and expensive, router. It will be interesting to see what the hardware requirements are for Steam to do the same.

Hopefully Ethernet/Powerline will be a good option

Xelene · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:52

OpenGL is not a big problem, most PS games use it anyway.

Cd0gz · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:53

Boomstick777 said:
^^ As long as new games get the ValveOS treatment I couldn't care about the old ones. I have wanted to ditch Windows in favour of a bloat free OS for gaming for a long time. Will be dual booting SteamOS for gaming with W7 for work stuff. Look forward to testing it out.

1+

smelly_legend · 23 Sep 2013 at 18:56

I like the sound of this. Wouldn't mind dual booting. One OS for serious work and the other for Games/media/streaming/surfing

teppic · 23 Sep 2013 at 19:03

I'm pretty sure I remember Valve saying that the OS could be used as a regular desktop OS too, not everything through Steam. So you could still run Libreoffice, PDF viewers, regular browsers, etc. They definitely said the Steambox won't be locked down and you're free to install Windows on it.

Fire_fly · 23 Sep 2013 at 19:08

Rooster212 said:
Hopefully Ethernet/Powerline will be a good option

Potentially, but not a universal solution for everybody, myself included.

james.miller · 23 Sep 2013 at 20:35

Boomstick777 said:
^^ As long as new games get the ValveOS treatment I couldn't care about the old ones. I have wanted to ditch Windows in favour of a bloat free OS for gaming for a long time. Will be dual booting SteamOS for gaming with W7 for work stuff. Look forward to testing it out.

Yeah i'm just going to write off the 210-odd games i've already got on steam to move to linux....or not lol.