SteamOS announced by Valve, a free operating system “available soon” for living room

cmmackem

cmmackem

New member
Thank You Valve and goodbye MS :D


Following up on its enigmatic announcement-of-an-announcement last week, Valve has unveiled SteamOS, a free stand-alone operating system “for living room machines.”

The OS “combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen,” according to the announcement. In-house ******ing to a TV, similar to what’s used in Nvidia’s Shield, is a feature of the OS.

Valve also emphasizes SteamOS’s openness. Users can “can alter or replace any part of the software or hardware they want,” and hardware manufacturers are free to “iterate in the living room at a much faster pace,” setting it apart from console-style closed systems.

A vague component of the announcement is Valve’s claim to have “achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing” in SteamOS. Valve adds that it’s “now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level.” It’s also unclear how many of the 3,000 games on Steam will run natively on SteamOS–Valve says you’ll be able to “access the full Steam catalog” through in-home ******ing. We’re also curious how well the operating system will be suited to desktop PCs or laptops that aren’t used in the living room.

Check back on Wednesday for the second of three announcements expected from Valve this week.
Click to expand...
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/23/valve-announces-steamos/
 
cmmackem said:
LOL again, errrrr not in the section that matters.

Really amped for this! Wonder how the hardware driver story is going to work.

My prediction is that Half Life 3 will be a SteamOS exclusive...just you watch.
Click to expand...

No problems, but don't make another steamos thread due to excitement :p
 
Could this signal the final nail in MS coffin? If they can move gaming onto Linux, windows is in serious trouble.
 
ave said:
Could this signal the final nail in MS coffin? If they can move gaming onto Linux, windows is in serious trouble.
Click to expand...

What about the other 80% of the world who don't but a PC for gaming but work or don't they count
 
MOnk said:
Slight over-reaction there. I doubt this will even make a dent in the numbers.
Click to expand...

Ike_009 said:
What about the other 80% of the world who don't but a PC for gaming but work or don't they count
Click to expand...

The biggest problem with linux is that 3rd party developers don't support it because it doesn't have the market share. 1% is not worth bothering about. But if they can boost their market share to say 10% through steamos that will put them in line with apple. There is then an incentive for companies to release drivers, for companies like adobe to port photoshop to linux etc. Once that happens there could very possibly be a snowball effect. If you can run everything in linux, why pay the additional R1500 for an os that does nothing more, and is less secure. So I hold my position, this could be very bad for MS.
 
cmmackem said:
My prediction is that Half Life 3 will be a SteamOS exclusive...just you watch.
Click to expand...

We can safely say that will not happen in this lifetime. Valve would obviously want people to move over to SteamOS, but making HL3 SOS exclusive would a) be a dick move, b) put a sizable dent in their reputation and c) they would ensure that the majority of gamers cannot play their new game, thus negatively impacting their profits.

Seeing as Valve are neither assholes nor dumb, I highly doubt they would do something as dumb as make one of the most anticipated games of all time exclusive to a single OS.
 
Clive Woofer said:
We can safely say that will not happen in this lifetime. Valve would obviously want people to move over to SteamOS, but making HL3 SOS exclusive would a) be a dick move, b) put a sizable dent in their reputation and c) they would ensure that the majority of gamers cannot play their new game, thus negatively impacting their profits.

Seeing as Valve are neither assholes nor dumb, I highly doubt they would do something as dumb as make one of the most anticipated games of all time exclusive to a single OS.
Click to expand...

I don't know about that. An enormous amount of people were extremely unhappy about Half Life 2 requiring Steam, and look where we are today.
 
Clive Woofer said:
We can safely say that will not happen in this lifetime. Valve would obviously want people to move over to SteamOS, but making HL3 SOS exclusive would a) be a dick move, b) put a sizable dent in their reputation and c) they would ensure that the majority of gamers cannot play their new game, thus negatively impacting their profits.

Seeing as Valve are neither assholes nor dumb, I highly doubt they would do something as dumb as make one of the most anticipated games of all time exclusive to a single OS.
Click to expand...

Why would it be a dick move when the OS is free for anyone to download? I think they don't need the revenue from half life 3 and so would be wise to use it as their trump card. Every console has their list of exclusives, so why shouldn't valve.
 
Eugene said:
I don't know about that. An enormous amount of people were extremely unhappy about Half Life 2 requiring Steam, and look where we are today.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but an OS exclusive is a far cry from being exclusive to a platform that runs on various OSs.

ave said:
Why would it be a dick move when the OS is free for anyone to download? I think they don't need the revenue from half life 3 and so would be wise to use it as their trump card. Every console has their list of exclusives, so why shouldn't valve.
Click to expand...

Because the Steambox is not a console. It might look and function a little like one, but it is still a gaming PC. Valve has made it clear from the start that they want the Steambox to be as open a system as possible, as opposed to actual consoles that are all closed systems. Making games exclusive to a certain operating system is going against this idea, not to mention that it makes absolutely no business sense either.
 
Clive Woofer said:
Because the Steambox is not a console. It might look and function a little like one, but it is still a gaming PC. Valve has made it clear from the start that they want the Steambox to be as open a system as possible, as opposed to actual consoles that are all closed systems. Making games exclusive to a certain operating system is going against this idea, not to mention that it makes absolutely no business sense either.
Click to expand...

I would say it depends on what their business is. Are they hoping to make as much money off half life 3 as they can, or are they hoping to make as much money off steam as they can.
Unfortunately with the windows 8 app store, microsoft is eating into their core business, and so this whole move was primarily about survival. If they use HL3 as a catalyst they can shift a **** load of people onto their platform, and hopefully get some momentum going.
If this doesn't take off they could potentially lose a lot more than a few game sales. (however well HL3 does, its a marginal percentage of their gross income.) From a business perspective I think they would be silly not to make it an exclusive- for the first little while at least. Other wise what really is the incentive to switch? people don't fix what ain't broken, and currently windows runs everything.
 
Eugene said:
A what now?
Click to expand...

Steam runs on multiple operating systems, so a game being Steam exclusive is not the same as a game being operating system exclusive.

ave said:
I would say it depends on what their business is. Are they hoping to make as much money off half life 3 as they can, or are they hoping to make as much money off steam as they can.
Unfortunately with the windows 8 app store, microsoft is eating into their core business, and so this whole move was primarily about survival. If they use HL3 as a catalyst they can shift a **** load of people onto their platform, and hopefully get some momentum going.
If this doesn't take off they could potentially lose a lot more than a few game sales. (however well HL3 does, its a marginal percentage of their gross income.) From a business perspective I think they would be silly not to make it an exclusive- for the first little while at least. Other wise what really is the incentive to switch? people don't fix what ain't broken, and currently windows runs everything.
Click to expand...

And you really don't think it's silly that they want to prevent the knock to their reputation this will cause? Because that will happen. Making a game exclusive to an OS that is incapable of playing more than 90% of the available videogames natively is going to cause a hit to their reputation that they're going to have a hard time recovering from. Valve wants to create a market where there is support for different operating systems, but making one of the most anticipated games ever exclusive to a single operating system is one of the absolute worst ways they can go about trying to get people to use their new OS. Valve isn't filled with retards. They won't pull a stunt like that.

If you really think their intention with Steambox and SteamOS is to mimic the console business model, then you're sadly missing the entire point of it.
 
Oh, I see Mac support was only released later. Regardless, at the time of release Half-Life 2 was playable by the majority of people, because MacOS and Linux users were a very small minority, as they still are today. Very few games have Mac/Linux support, even today, so the fact that the game released without Mac/Linux support in 2004 isn't really all that surprising.

Regardless, it will earn them a lot of scorn if they were to make HL3 exclusive to an OS that roughly 85% of gamers are not using. It's a moot point anyway. We can argue until the cows go home, but it's not really going to do us much good. All I'm saying is Valve will never restrict gamers by making their game exclusive to a single OS. Valve is a positive force in the gaming industry and platform/OS exclusives are not a positive thing. They won't try to force anyone into using an OS just for one game.

I think a lot of the speculation around things like 'Steambox exclusives' comes from people being uninformed about what exactly the Steambox is. It is not a console, it is merely a PC optimized for use in the living room on the big screen.
 
MOnk said:
Slight over-reaction there. I doubt this will even make a dent in the numbers.
Click to expand...

True but they will lose Windows being the PC gamers OS(Well it is the only) of choice.

Also windows uses a lot of your PC's resources with background tasks etc and limits any PC of their true potential. Imagine if SteamOS could eliminate all of that(They did mention it) , your FPS/performance could spike or even double.
That is one of the reasons that consoles can get okay FPS(30) on most games with the most ancient of hardware
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top